A Paper Cage

Journal of Canadian Studies, Winter 2004 by Foreman, Gabe

This was no game. The woman led me

backwards through the eye of the mind

until she was the smallest point

my thought could hold to. And at that moment

- RK. Page, "A Backwards Journey"

We've already seen the end

and know that next moment will slip

whatever paper cage we build. A poem has edges;

its references spill to indescribable space. The game is to make the mind

finish what the eye supplies. Like how the woman on the can of Dutch Cleanser Escherizes

the moment we see she holds the same container in her hand, and on its label we see

her again contained, but smaller, holding yet another container, and so on, and so far back

only the mind can follow. She becomes, for us, a sort of Alice in Holland. But locked

in a cycle of housework, she plays the rabbit's role: for her, no cards, no croquet, and no tea,

this was no game. The woman led me

deep into the Netherlands of abstraction

where the mind is a place of painted tulips on cross-hatched fields

with windmills dotting the distance - the mind is a country reclaimed from an ocean dark

and sparkling, a sea wider than a lifetime of sails could travel -

the ocean is what we cannot explain, braced back with walls -

walls we must walk the insides of, patching what holes we find

lest they crack and fracture, forcing jets of pressure inward,

forcing jets of pressure inward; lest the walls themselves burst

and heave the entire weight of what can't be defined

backwards through the eye of the mind.

Imagine being asked

to paint the last woman on the final copy

of the cleanser's crazy label?

Would you be able

to hold the brush stable

enough? Or would you slip and anoint

the illusion with a dab, plugging the mystery?

Like Escher, if his edge slipped, and suddenly the water flowed only one way,

draining out of the picture? Would you sit and squint

until she was the smallest point,

too tiny for the mind's finest brush

to touch? At that moment, we see although the poem

has edges, its references spill us beyond the boundaries.

At that moment, part of what we are spreads out into white points

that flash across the ocean to confirm

its far-off shores, like birds we have sent

who, rather than return, settle in the arms of bright trees and sing.

I have strained to hear their song,

and once reached up and touched a fragment

my thought could hold to. And at that moment

- Gabe Foreman