“Moving Riveted” by Mary Dean Lee
Photo Credit: Noaa AwLk
Riding the train east along the St. Lawrence, sunny afternoon, sitting by the window. January scant snow on fields flat then rolling, river pale aqua close to shore, deepening to dark purple farther out. Occasional clusters of houses, a town flies past, a power plant, then deep snow and woods. The tracks are suddenly in the middle of high dunes, and down the cliff below, waves with whitecaps breaking, and I see the spray releasing in the air. This river is like an ocean, force of the surf and wildness of the wind, but it’s a body of fresh water moving, boundaries on either side. My earphones play violin sonatas and partitas, pace picking up, the increased speed rocks me past bumpy to swaying. I follow the curl of the coastline around spits and coves, churn of sea and carved inlets so close. Then WHAM rows of birch and evergreens block my view of the water. Guildwood, Cobourg, Belleville. The tracks shift inland. Kingston, Brockville, Cornwall. No snow anywhere. Big pouf of purple-lined white clouds in a small corner of the sky, northeast horizon where the river doesn’t end. Last stop before Montreal, Dorval in forty-five. Sky clear now, longest shadows I‘ve ever seen—in the woods against the snow. Country lanes and rooftops almost all white, sun ready to drop. Tomorrow the dunes under the tracks will cave, and the train will crash into the river, and no one will know I did it.
Artist Statement
I write poems to discover and express, to unravel and undress. To taste, and let my tongue linger a little longer. I am drawn to poke around, stir up, tease apart, fiddle with things that clash, jar, and jangle. I like putting words together to capture an intense emotion, insight, a moment of joy, despair, or confusion on seeing, hearing, embracing life's beat and bounce. My thrill is a quiet place outside my window, underneath the redbud towering over the fading forsythia. There I am, and every line I write, I am tossing a curly lock to the world.
Mary Dean Lee’s debut collection Tidal was published April 2024 by Pine Row Press and was shortlisted for the Quebec Writers’ Federation 2024 A. M. Klein Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2021, The Fiddlehead, Hamilton Stone Review, Ploughshares, MicroLit. She grew up in Milledgeville, Georgia, studied theatre and literature at Duke University and Eckerd College, and received her PhD in organizational behavior at Yale before moving to Montreal to teach at McGill University.