Atlantic Snapshots: Low Tide, Courtenay Bay - Spacing Atlantic

Dear Gillian,

Keep taking these pictures. Happy there’s a site that’s publishing your work. You have managed to create a sad beauty in this “industryscape.”

I lived in Saint John for six years and worked with autistic people. The head of the Autism Centre said there were more people born with autism in Saint John per capita than any other place in Canada. And she added that they living in Renforth where the spew from the pulp and paper plant drifts downwind. Here are a couple of poems I wrote related to this. For anyway who might not know him, Freeman Patterson is one of Canada’s most renowned nature photographers and philosopher teachers.

THE TISSUE ISSUE BLUES

A situation with which I take issue
Is the use of trees for bathroom tissue.

Half a million in a year
Just to wipe our lowly rear.

Better the brand with the bright green label.
Help the trees to enable

the air to clean its carbon load.
Keep Scottie’s Softee in a branch plant mode.

We don’t need this puffy clown.
What we need is our trees not down.

So next time you’re running, your a-wipe to buy,
Think of our forests; think of our sky.

Don’t let the tall trees get a bum wrap.
Switch to the green brand to clean up our crap.

Free the trees to fix the air
Recycled paper’s fine down there.

ON MEETING NEW BRUNSWICK AND FREEMAN PATTERSON

Near the eye of a seagull
watching the ocean roll soft banks of salt brine
to shore cast with shadow,
the long shaft of morning bears down on all mankind with pained show of trouble.
The great sea is churning.

See plunder on hillside
where trigger of dozer squeezes the fire of blast path
and wide swath of pulp belt, a new marine’s haircut,
fate sealed by the buzz: big wealth for a few and jobs for the lot.
Jobs! Jobs! We need jobs! To get more than we’ve got.

Jobs that buy fast food,
cigs, beer and what Jones has,
Coke, Pepsi, the Big M steal nature’s authority;
rainbow cans, cardboard cups—cast in a bad dream.
Jobs! Jobs! We need jobs! The vast, vicious scream.

Jobs to get. Grow! Get! Mow! Get! Throw!
The barons get richer; the hillsides lose ground
to the junk that adorns them
like a Christmas tree laden with bulbs, balls and tinsel,
one faded old angel, but no branches to see.

See branch plants in cities,
their chemical cauldrons effluence expunging
the memory of acres,
land’s record of fibre soaked to soft fragments,
the pure, white, fine need,

the desire for white paper—disposable towels and reams of white hankies,
virgin tree for rear wipe cloths; the spewing of Xerox gives birth to more bad brews,
while rip goes the paper,
rip, rip goes the tree.

and in the air,
fierce formulas working,
nature, the scientist, tells us with hot sweat
and glass towers falling
why lichen-less forests from the strange brew we’re making
is the naive apprentice stumbling on magic
throwing this jar and that into the brew,
the oceans, lakes, rivers
showing us sadly with cancered fish, dead seals
and bright algae spreading
what spell we have loosed.

But among all these giants,
these men who grow money from land, sea and air source,
these few who own all life
and turn it to death’s cry,
there is one quiet free man up at dawn’s calling,
and breathing the scenery
where bees dance and gather on hillsides of balsam,
searching the fertile
where no rape will enter,
where greed has not gathered
at the feast of the Titans.

Just a moment where
mushroom might mix with a lichen
by a brook that still trickles
its musical stream;
the meal he is eating
is tiny and treasured
like gold in his veins
he searches to feel it
and not leave a trace
of himself at the scene.
Never harm a small leaf
where his camera has been.

But his golden rod silence
is slashed by greed’s chorus,
its pulse thrillingly throbs,
Jobs! Jobs! We need jobs!

But it will never bring peace
and will only increase
our madness as mobs.

3 comments

Joanne Light

15 years ago

Dear Gillian,

Keep taking these pictures. Happy there’s a site that’s publishing your work. You have managed to create a sad beauty in this “industryscape.”

I lived in Saint John for six years and worked with autistic people. The head of the Autism Centre said there were more people born with autism in Saint John per capita than any other place in Canada. And she added that they living in Renforth where the spew from the pulp and paper plant drifts downwind. Here are a couple of poems I wrote related to this. For anyway who might not know him, Freeman Patterson is one of Canada’s most renowned nature photographers and philosopher teachers.

THE TISSUE ISSUE BLUES

A situation with which I take issue
Is the use of trees for bathroom tissue.

Half a million in a year
Just to wipe our lowly rear.

Better the brand with the bright green label.
Help the trees to enable

the air to clean its carbon load.
Keep Scottie’s Softee in a branch plant mode.

We don’t need this puffy clown.
What we need is our trees not down.

So next time you’re running, your a-wipe to buy,
Think of our forests; think of our sky.

Don’t let the tall trees get a bum wrap.
Switch to the green brand to clean up our crap.

Free the trees to fix the air
Recycled paper’s fine down there.

ON MEETING NEW BRUNSWICK AND FREEMAN PATTERSON

Near the eye of a seagull
watching the ocean roll soft banks of salt brine
to shore cast with shadow,
the long shaft of morning bears down on all mankind with pained show of trouble.
The great sea is churning.

See plunder on hillside
where trigger of dozer squeezes the fire of blast path
and wide swath of pulp belt, a new marine’s haircut,
fate sealed by the buzz: big wealth for a few and jobs for the lot.
Jobs! Jobs! We need jobs! To get more than we’ve got.

Jobs that buy fast food,
cigs, beer and what Jones has,
Coke, Pepsi, the Big M steal nature’s authority;
rainbow cans, cardboard cups—cast in a bad dream.
Jobs! Jobs! We need jobs! The vast, vicious scream.

Jobs to get. Grow! Get! Mow! Get! Throw!
The barons get richer; the hillsides lose ground
to the junk that adorns them
like a Christmas tree laden with bulbs, balls and tinsel,
one faded old angel, but no branches to see.

See branch plants in cities,
their chemical cauldrons effluence expunging
the memory of acres,
land’s record of fibre soaked to soft fragments,
the pure, white, fine need,

the desire for white paper—disposable towels and reams of white hankies,
virgin tree for rear wipe cloths; the spewing of Xerox gives birth to more bad brews,
while rip goes the paper,
rip, rip goes the tree.

and in the air,
fierce formulas working,
nature, the scientist, tells us with hot sweat
and glass towers falling
why lichen-less forests from the strange brew we’re making
is the naive apprentice stumbling on magic
throwing this jar and that into the brew,
the oceans, lakes, rivers
showing us sadly with cancered fish, dead seals
and bright algae spreading
what spell we have loosed.

But among all these giants,
these men who grow money from land, sea and air source,
these few who own all life
and turn it to death’s cry,
there is one quiet free man up at dawn’s calling,
and breathing the scenery
where bees dance and gather on hillsides of balsam,
searching the fertile
where no rape will enter,
where greed has not gathered
at the feast of the Titans.

Just a moment where
mushroom might mix with a lichen
by a brook that still trickles
its musical stream;
the meal he is eating
is tiny and treasured
like gold in his veins
he searches to feel it
and not leave a trace
of himself at the scene.
Never harm a small leaf
where his camera has been.

But his golden rod silence
is slashed by greed’s chorus,
its pulse thrillingly throbs,
Jobs! Jobs! We need jobs!

But it will never bring peace
and will only increase
our madness as mobs.
Graeme Stewart-Robertson

15 years ago

That’s “Courtenay Bay” to be precise, but I love the photo so much that I won’t complain too much.
Emma Feltes

15 years ago

Thanks for catching that, Graeme! Fixed.

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3 comments