“Road Trip to Lac Saint-Jean” by Diane Massam
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Road Trip to Lac Saint-Jean” by Diane Massam, part of the League’s Fresh Voices program.
Road Trip to Lac Saint-Jean
By Diane Massam
Poplar smudges, dark on pale,
quatre-temps drupes
dapple wet shale, fjord
becomes lake as we emerge
to the brilliance of wild blueberries.
Rounding shallow Pekuakami
over Chapdelaine ground, layers
of time compile new names.
Place remains.
Inniminan, bleuets.
And in the van, a fragile skin
hugs each of us tight, separate
words well up, then turn
within, untranslated.
Bleuets, blueberries.
In the lowbush distance,
through dusty blues,
under ballpark brims
harvest crews pick
blueberries, arรกndanos.
all time coincides,
we move together,
through this spread
of land, silent,
small, against all
that is outside of us.
Copyright ยฉ Diane Massam
Diane Massam writes about time, place, and the entanglement of nature and mind. With recent publications in Prairie Fire, Grain, and Queenโs Quarterly, she won the Federation of BC Writers poetry contest (2021), the Arc Award of Awesomeness (September 2024), and the Abkhazi Gardens poetry contest (2026). A professor emeritus of linguistics at the University of Toronto, she has roots in BC, Ontario, and Quรฉbec, and now lives in her hometown, Victoria. (IG: @massampoetry)
Fresh Voices is a publication and workshop program created by and for the League’s associate members, curated and edited by Erin Vance.
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