On the Great Northern Peninsula, Newfoundland
Leavetaking
In the photograph a boat is seen leaving a wake of successive shallow waves as it heads out to sea. The waves ripple outward, ever shallower, towards the derelict and abandoned boat-house on the bank of the inlet. A few tall grasses in the foreground lean leftward as if calling the boat back. But the boat and its fishermen lean resolutely forward, drawn perhaps to an unseen source of light.
The far shore is dark as is the foreground where blind, unblinking, boathouse windows stare. The scene evokes a sense of hollow leave-taking, the last few moments before the boat leaves the picture when an empty finality will descend. The wake disappears and, like us, is gone, traceless. The skeletal remains of the boathouse will continue to slowly disintegrate until it too is swallowed by time.
I’m reminded of boats in a painting of ours by Ojibwe artist Glenna Matoush titled “Shaman Transporting Souls”.
Matoush portrays boats that resemble the images in Ontario petroglyphs
Archeologists debate whether they were created by the Algonquin people a thousand years ago, or were inscribed by a Norse King who is believed to have sailed from Norway down the St. Lawrence River in about 1700 B.C. Through her act of painting , Matoush appropriated the image in the petroglyph as an affirmation of First Nation spirituality.
And, as I look at the boat images, I’m reminded of a part of D.H. Lawrence’s “Ship of Death”
We are dying, we are dying, so all we can do
is now to be willing to die, and to build the ship
of death to carry the soul on the longest journey.
A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.
There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening black darkening still
blacker …
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one’s own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.
O let us talk of quiet that we know,
that we can know, the deep and lovely quiet
of a strong heart at peace!
How can we this, our own quietus, make?
The Final Stretch 