Michael Ondaatje’s The Distance of a Shout: New and Selected Poems is a fresh and full account of his poetic journey across more than half a century. We often find him on or near the water, which carries us on existential currents to where we need to land.
All Along the Mazinaw
Later the osprey falling towards only what he sees
the messenger heron warning of our progress up Mud Lake
a paddle is stranger to what it heaves out of the way
Wherever you go within a silence is witnessed,
everything aware of alteration but you, creatures who veer, a torn leaf descending
In rapids rocks gaze up with the bright paint of previous canoes
But now only you, for an hour in the arms of the Mazinaw
