‘Ishtoka’: A Poem by Braden Chevalier

Ishtoka

There’s a lake on the way to Ishtoka Bay whose name I won’t recite.
It’s the kind of mere where things disappear in the middle of the night
at a time in your life when some wretched strife that you scarcely can explain
has you pulling oars between her shores against a driving rain.

Well, it was just so, that some years ago, I found myself alone,
half frozen stiff in a grimy skiff I confess was not my own.
Now I’m not proud, but I can’t aloud tell what befell before
which made me make for that loathsome lake where I swore I’d go no more.

See, it’s the kind of tale so beyond the pale it defies both verb and noun,
and if put to words then at least two thirds would come out upside-down.
Now I’m not the kind to hide behind a lie to spare my shame,
so I just won’t tell you what compelled me there from where I came.

Well anyhow, I set my prow and rowed away from shore
in rain so bold I could scarce behold the spoon end of my oar.
Desperate, half-blind; slim chance to find the rocky shoal I sought.
Eight years had passed since I’d been there last; would I even know the spot?

Well, the rain amassed and the bilge rose fast, and the skiff seemed nigh half-sunk.
She was riding low, awful hard to row, laden with my steamer trunk,
and a splitting axe, twelve burlap sacks, and a drum of kerosene.
What a dreadful sight I’d have been that night; glad I was to not be seen.

But then full abrupt the rain let up and the moon emerged between
two clouds as though to flaunt its glow and clarify the scene.
So I looked about, then suppressed a shout, and felt my back draw tight,
for abeam my craft skimmed a wooden raft not ten yards to my right.

And standing large upon that barge its hulking captain loomed:
dishevelled, old, but proud and bold, like an ancient queen exhumed.
She cast her gaze like two grim rays from beneath her broad-brimmed hat,
and as she drifted by and met my eye I withered where I sat.

For such a sight they were that night, that specter and her craft,
with rubber tires and spools of wire in stacks about the raft.
And center stage: an iron cage, which almost made me miss
the heaped trawl net, too large to set and sweep a lake like this.

So sharp, her stare, it sliced the air and shook my sorry spine,
as though because her cargo was as ominous as mine
she could plain read my heart and deed writ clear across my face,
like she knew me better than if I’d met her any other place.

Then the storm resumed and swift consumed the light with gloomy black,
and just as quick as a magic trick the darkness claimed her back.
I sighed relief—but also grief?—to watch her quit my sight.
She—the crew of one of two skiffs passing in the night.

Now, you may deem she was a dream, but know, for what it’s worth:
there, at the scene, we could have been the only two on earth.
As for what brought her to the water, but the cattails know;
within the deep the fathoms keep her secret down below.

There’s a lake, they say, out Ishtoka way, whose name’s of no import.
It’s the kind of spot you’d not be caught save as a last resort,
where a secret’s sure to be secure between its vacant shores,
and the seldom few who’ve been there too have secrets worse than yours.

Braden Chevalier has been a computer game developer, a teacher, and a carny. He lives in Montréal, Canada.