BATTER –

that’s the name, I’m thinking,

for the huff-and-buffet

rhetoric that fulminates against me, me

and every other smart-arsed upstart

lover-of-the-vertical who ventures

up on the tolt it scours

and sculpts. Across Conception Bay it gathers wrath

and hurls it, a tirade so pauseless,

so pressure-hosed that listening’s impossible

and mandatory, the poor mind veering King

Learily into synch, unbonneted,

banging back and forth like bad hockey.

Already, in deference, I’ve doffed

and packed away my hat and glasses, now

it wants me bare and walking-stickless,

wants me smeared like flesh-and-calcium pâté

across the rough volcaniclastic ridge.

To catch my breath I crouch

in the lee of an impeccably poised

erratic, an elephant en pointe, CFA,

emplaced by a glacier with a raven’s

drastic sense of humour.

In a moment, once I’ve regathered mass

and gravity, I will arise and lurch

up onto the crest, heading, with my

squat-hunched stagger, for the shelter

of that patch of tuckamore –

the bristling ancient quasimodoed

hedgehog of a life form

that lives here.