Emily Brontë’s Long Lost Sister, an excerpt from Winter, An Epic
Amanda Earl
Writer, editor, publisher, reviewer and visual poet living on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples, Amanda Earl is the author of several books, including Beast Body Epic, a collection of long poems provoked by a near-death health crisis. Gratitude to the City of Ottawa for funding this manuscript
i'm every gothic stop action dark horror
hard button-eyed black-haired rag doll
come to life
i am the enemy of winter
i shout at winter
i melt it with the heat of my angry
flashing eyes when it smothers fields
with its vast cold white
each flake conforming into monotony
i've never done a recreational drug
but in winter i feel like it
going my way among dim shapes
having been breathed out[1]
Horace dissolves the cold
with bellows and with fire[2]
i do triple shots of espresso
two-hundred-and-fifty-eight
days ago winter ended
i have been alive for sixty-two
seasons of ceaseless dread
how many more
can i count on
how many
more anythings
my husband's friend dead
of a coronary at sixty-seven
in her condo alone for twelve
hours before her friend asks
for a wellness check
are bodies buried
in the ground in winter
is the earth unyielding
to accept the dead our tears
turn to ice on our cheeks
we aren't even able to grieve
in this hard season
no reason to rush from
the warm pub
when we hear the news
our feet dragging the cold
over barren sidewalks
the police find her body
her cherished cats gone to
the humane society
another dear friends’ feline
companion of thirteen years’
collapse and quick demise
so many failures of the heart
in harsh weather i cannot settle
it incites claustrophobia
but i dread ice
nothing but water
in its thin layer
a surface of liquid
and the pressure
of boots i fall
into gloom
trees drop leaves
like tears of grief and all
that remains is twisted
branches and stumps
the bitter edges of a rough
and ragged sky steel in the dusk
and flat in the frozen air
on alert and rigid
i am fragile
these bones
now old these blues
deepening with the
onset of time
i am Emily Brontë’s
long lost sister night
darkens around me,
the wild winds coldly blow[3]
in Wuthering Heights, she
mentions winter twenty-
two times out walking
Cathy and Heathcliff come
upon a nest of skeletons
laps wing, a bonny bird
something like a bird
within me sings
to find solace in fellow longing
i listen to Muddy Waters
at four in the morning
through headphones
while lying in bed
i crave the incessant buzz
of that honeybee
that bottleneck slide
a lover’s fingers over me
repeated riffs
and harmonica moan
sail on my little honeybee
i wish i still owned
a turntable
i would savour the
needle scratch crackle
minutes spent
in revolutions
as infinite grey
covers the sky
every year i vow to overcome
my fear of precarity
Ashburnham Hill
is silver and blinding
so we go out right after breakfast
on the first
big snow
small dry flakes
sidewalks still uncovered
we walk our zigzag ways
how compatible we are my
husband and I both prefer
to avoid the direct path neither of
us is straight is that a coincidence
i find kindreds in the sleepless
chain rattlers of black
and white films as they wander
early mornings
more than anything i want
to join an early risers’ club
or be a faerie in the wild hunt
condemned to ride in the whiteout
for eternity
i make lists of films to give me
something to do as i listen to cars
drive over wet pavement on Bronson
i hear scraping on windshields
from the 19th floor
did you see young Björk in the Juniper Tree,
that fable of witches and birds i love the sounds
of Icelandic vowels fourteen of them its traces
of Old Norse the Viking witches or wand-wed
sung to by young girls
i spent childhood Decembers
a-wandering through the slush
of Mississauga suburbs a-wassailing
in townhouses of choir members gowned
at the Victoria College chorus singing
Eileen Arun and Hallelujah in Latin
as we precariously carried candles
down the Old Vic
chapel’s aisles trying not to set
robes on fire
as Saint Peter glared down
from stained glass dangling the promise
of eternal life, the keys to heaven
in the hands of the patriarchy
as always
i yearned not for the fantasy
of an afterlife of platitudes
and peace i wanted trouble
had planned a secret escape
to Paris to study at the Sorbonne
instead i fled to an apartment
on Old Dundas near Keele
where a basement bachelor with
a locked door and a gold
fold out couch was
my refuge, a
green wooden bus shelter
unprotected from the wind
blowing from the Humber River
ravine and waiting for a bus
that never seemed to arrive
Muddy tells me everything's
going to be alright
should i believe him
near midnight plows scrape pavement
back to black seventeen centimetres
predicted overnight
snow casts a yellow glow
into the dark bedroom as if
an alien ship has landed
from a faraway planet
i have no reverence for freshly fallen
snow or stillness i find it unsettling
reminiscent of evenings in that old
red brick house, family fights smashed
crockery my parents my brother
the curtains of the big picture window
in the living room open to reveal deep
blue depths the vast emptiness of a snowy
field encountering a starless sky
i lay on the frozen ground in my snowsuit
to make snow angels i thought of baby
Jesus alone in a manger i wondered
about angels and saviours
fog's early usually happens for xmas
socking in the airport not my business
i don't fly slush clogs drains causing
roads and sidewalks to flood we detour
around puddles wait for cars to pass
so we don't get soaked part ways
at Kowloon i continue down the hill
for coffee and poetry discussions
the last meeting of the year
in December everything ends
in thick fog we navigate icy
interlocking bricks over the Rideau
Canal one of us slips every few minutes
it's jarring my legs stiffen i don't want to fall
after days of darkness the cold tilt of the sun
brings the sunshine i forego every
chore prepare like i'm going
on an Arctic expedition
long red coat with fake
fur lined hood: check
plaid red and black scarf: check
long johns, touque, double mittens,
red boots: check
purple headphones: check
big over the shoulder bag carries a poetry book
no ice today as i venture out
David Naimon’s voice in my ears
and the sun blinding he and Lucie
are in Sicily i've seen the photos
of them glowing
we have never met in person
but i’ve listened to his podcast since
that first lockdown at the end of
winter lying in my bed in a prison
of grey at a time when only art could save us
he talks with Dionne Brand
on his podcast which is one of the ways
i survive winter
conversations with good people
caring artists she talks about the book
she found when as a child she opened
the bottom drawer of her grandmother's
dresser near the black cake
at xmas we watch horror
movies beginning with Ginger Snaps
the quintessential Canadian flick
set in the suburbs of Bailey Downs,
could have been my stomping grounds
werewolf me, at the start of adolescence
wanting to run, bite, draw blood
what a bore winter is, especially
the holidaze
winter, you monster, you bringer
of frost, the longest night is here
at last and tomorrow the light returns
to celebrate we eat a star made
of gingerbread and iced geometrically
symmetrical lines as thin as the distance
between summer and now
constellations of dead stars
in epics of sky i have never felt
more distant from love than in winter
ravens fly high above office towers
empty of government workers
we sit down the hall from
the security guard drinking our
Starbucks, the sole cafe open on
the twenty-fifth is packed, so we
take our holiday red and green
cardboard cups to the mall
its living wall bright with poinsettia
after receiving a confection from the
Chocolate Lady who is handing out
shiny blue and gold tinfoil covered
balls of delight to the staff who
have to work i hope
they get time and a half
has someone dumped the contents
of their slurpee onto the sidewalk?
it's just the salt turning the slush blue
adding to the dirt-covered snow
piles on Laurier as we make our way
home to put in the turkey
we slather the thawed raw bird
in melted butter, garlic, salt and thyme,
stuff its cavities with onion and lemon
its roasting scent leaves us boneless
and napping through Meg Ryan and
Tom Hanks at the top of the Empire State
no word for third last I coin
Tri ultimate for this December day
we chase fog down Nanny Goat Hill
it covers ādisōke, future storytelling site,
from Algonquin Anishinaabe, this library rises
i feel hope no freezing rain yet we take
photos of the red Adirondack chairs
facing away from 12 Points
in a Classical Balance, Chung Hung's
cedar sine wave at Sparks Street Lookout
stalwart unaffected by age
the abandoned road is nameless we climb
between concrete barriers to walk in the ankle
deep snow wet enough now to make snow
balls an upturned plastic patio chair with
dried bits of autumn leaves on its legs
and the fog covered ash trees in the distance
with a rose tinged glow are subjects of our photos
sunlight up Bank en route to Jericho's
for lunch with a friend i dodge reflections
of distorted Glebe establishments
the number 7 speeds by i narrowly
escape its wake i think of whales
and oceans and the grace of floating
for a moment in the sun
[1] Anne Carson, If Not, Winter, Fragments of Sappho.
[2] Horace, Ode 1.9.
[3] Emily Bronte, Spellbound