By Toklas
Date: 31 October 1999

Lady Macbeth Roams the Banks of theFraser River

Her feet tap along the boardwalk, counting out
the shadows that haunt the dark, autumn mist.
Pacing, waiting for new souls to entertain, to dance with
cleaved rocks embedded like ancient stories on fractured shores.  

Blinking lights from labouring tugs deceive her heart a dozen times,
playing on the running tide. Leaning from the long railing, 
beseeching hands hold faintly-fast to the brittle pages of her life, 
which fall around her in pieces like a tattered gown.

River ghosts write upon her countenance, worn
by the scratching nub of a quill dipped in salty ink.
A Lady’s face once raised to a heart swell on a tide,
Blown by cold winds—blighted by brief travelers from a northern sea.

Darkness now stains the banks, the mists 
settling into the salt-mud, sinking into the footprints
her feet make as she staggers from memory to memory,
while the river brine claims token remnants from her wringing hands.