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Painting
Archipelago
The Circle Game
Sinistre
Passages
Snapshots
Surfacing
Landmarks
Terra Australis
For Always
Other

Passages


In this series, cropped images of siding, signs and awnings are juxtaposed against text extracted from the journals I kept when I first moved to Salt Spring Island.  These records embody the trials and tribulations of a personal odyssey.

First Light

I am awoken on this (my first) morning
by the hum of a float plane leaving the dock
The sound of someone’s departure.
I try to balance on this rocky shore–
far from the sand and surf of a sunnier time.
Standing on a moving threshold
I curl my toes into oyster shells–
stuck in stone, empty of flesh, robbed of pearls.
I cling to the comfort of drifting timbers,
washed up and worn out, just like me–
too many years wasted–
swimming in circles–
no stars to steer them by.


I leave behind (I wish) a wake of mistaken identities
the shards of a shipwrecked marriage.
An endless ripple of regrets is
interrupted by a wave of tears.
I’ve come to bail another ship
patch her holes, scrub her decks, fill her hold.
I work all day to drown the sounds
of all the voices that wear me down–
lapping slowly.
My sea legs seek out solid ground,
to be not drowning, waving.

                                                   © Gillian McConnell  – 2010

Copyright © Gillian McConnell 2014 – All rights reserved