The Moose

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations For Grace Bulmer Bowers Grace Bulmer Bowers Elizabeth Bishop’s aunt From narrow provinces of fish and bread and tea, home of the long tides where the bay leaves the sea twice a day and takes the herrings long rides, where if the river enters or retreats in a wall of brown foam depends on if it meets the bay coming in, the bay not at home; where, silted red, sometimes the sun sets facing a red sea, and others, veins veins Used as a verb: to extend over or mark with lines, as in the manner of veins the flats’ lavender, rich mud in burning rivulets rivulets A small stream or brook ; on red, gravelly roads, down rows of sugar maples, past clapboard farmhouses and neat, clapboard churches, bleached, ridged as clamshells, past twin silver birches, through late afternoon a bus journeys west, the windshield flashing pink, pink glancing off of metal, brushing the dented flank of blue, beat-up enamel; down hollows, up rises, and waits, patient, while a lone traveller gives kisses and embraces to seven relatives and a collie supervises. Goodbye to the elms, to the farm, to the dog. The bus starts. The light grows richer; the fog, shifting, salty, thin, comes closing in. Its cold, round crystals form and slide and settle in the white hens’ feathers, in gray glazed cabbages, on the cabbage roses and lupins lupins A tall, flowering plant (Lupinus) in the legume family; its seeds (lupin beans) have been used as food like apostles apostles A plant native to Brazil with large, fragrant white and purple flowers ; the sweet peas cling to their wet white string on the whitewashed fences; bumblebees creep inside the foxgloves foxgloves A colorful perennial flower, with cup-shaped buds. , and evening commences. One stop at Bass River Bass River All locations in Nova Scotia near the Bay of Fundy . Then the Economies Economies Locations (Lower Economy, Middle Economy, and Upper Economy) in Nova Scotia near the Bay of Fundy — Lower, Middle, Upper; Five Islands Five Islands All locations in Nova Scotia near the Bay of Fundy , Five Houses Five Houses All locations in Nova Scotia near the Bay of Fundy , where a woman shakes a tablecloth out after supper. A pale flickering. Gone. The Tantramar marshes Tantramar marshes On the Chignecto Isthmus connecting Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada and the smell of salt hay. An iron bridge trembles and a loose plank rattles but doesn’t give way. On the left, a red light swims through the dark: a ship’s port lantern. Two rubber boots show, illuminated, solemn. A dog gives one bark. A woman climbs in with two market bags, brisk, freckled, elderly. “A grand night. Yes, sir, all the way to Boston.” She regards us amicably. Moonlight as we enter the New Brunswick woods, hairy, scratchy, splintery; moonlight and mist caught in them like lamb’s wool on bushes in a pasture. The passengers lie back. Snores. Some long sighs. A dreamy divagation divagations Wanderings begins in the night, a gentle, auditory, slow hallucination.... In the creakings and noises, an old conversation —not concerning us, but recognizable, somewhere, back in the bus: Grandparents’ voices uninterruptedly talking, in Eternity: names being mentioned, things cleared up finally; what he said, what she said, who got pensioned pensioned Dismissed from employment, typically because of age or health; paid a pension. ; deaths, deaths and sicknesses; the year he remarried; the year (something) happened. She died in childbirth. That was the son lost when the schooner foundered schooner foundered A ship that has sunk or filled with water . He took to drink. Yes. She went to the bad. When Amos began to pray even in the store and finally the family had to put him away. “Yes ...” that peculiar affirmative. “Yes ...” A sharp, indrawn breath, half groan, half acceptance, that means “Life’s like that. We know it(also death).” Talking the way they talked in the old featherbed, peacefully, on and on, dim lamplight in the hall, down in the kitchen, the dog tucked in her shawl. Now, it’s all right now even to fall asleep just as on all those nights. —Suddenly the bus driver stops with a jolt, turns off his lights. A moose has come out of the impenetrable wood and stands there, looms, rather, in the middle of the road. It approaches; it sniffs at the bus’s hot hood. Towering, antlerless, high as a church, homely as a house (or, safe as houses safe as houses Totally safe ). A man’s voice assures us “Perfectly harmless....” Some of the passengers exclaim in whispers, childishly, softly, “Sure are big creatures.” “It’s awful plain.” “Look! It’s a she!” Taking her time, she looks the bus over, grand, otherworldly. Why, why do we feel (we all feel) this sweet sensation of joy? “Curious creatures,” says our quiet driver, rolling his r’s. “Look at that, would you.” Then he shifts gears. For a moment longer, by craning backward, the moose can be seen on the moonlit macadam macadam Road, pavement ; then there’s a dim smell of moose, an acrid acrid Pungent, irritating smell of gasoline.