Victoria Rowing is from my second book, The Quarterly. In these verses I reminisce of Victoria, a young woman who lived in a small village named Willisville near Manitoulin Island where I resided for a year. It traces her last day on Froid lake and what I imagined her final thoughts were. It’s sad, but it keeps the memory of her alive.
Lyrics
Victoria Rowing
Victoria pulls toward high noon
Passing Morey Swamp - Mating Bay
Over silver clouds of darting minnows
Swift gathering loons
Victoria hears the distant thunder
Eyes a pushed burnt sky
Watches as a curtain of rain sweeps the narrows
Cutting a deep swath
Dividing her journey
Victoria finds shore - holes up
Sheltered she watches the rain tap it’s spotted
rhythmic dance on the lake’s surface
She listens to a troubled song whisper in the trees
Victoria recalls her Father’s bob and line
Black cotton laying on speckled surface
Then peeling away
A union of land and deep water
Victoria sank with that image
Under a patchwork of decades
And fleeting ancestral faces
© Fredrick Brooks 2013
