We’d be sitting in an outer roombefore dawn, and someone would say“Who’s gonna wake Terry?”,and usually Darrel would go inand you’d hear this loud grumblethrough the wall, then Darrelwould come back outand we’d wait, and then we’d hearthis THUMP! THUMP! and Terrywould come out and say,“WHAT ARE YOU GUYS SITTINGAROUND FOR, LET’S GET GOING!”
because there will come a milewhere he is too weak to brush a horseflyfrom the bridge of his nose, his head on a stretcher pillowringed by news microphones, surroundedby the indifference of trees;and until then it’s about reaching outand threading each day, each corner and milepostat a time and pulling the land in close;there’s a bottle of Atlantic waterfrom Come-By-Chance Newfoundlandsomewhere in the tour vanten feet back and god willingfor every two steps Terry takestowards Vancouver, he hops twicewith his real leg in order to givethe artificial one timeto swing through; “I don’t runa normal technical”, he says over the motel phoneto a Montreal radio host, his voice the grandand rich monotone of the road; he is becomingthe land through which he runs;a doctor in Hamilton says the residual limbnor longer fits into the bucket of his prosthesis,he is expansive, becoming the placeswhere photos will never do justice,in every Canadian brain, however, Terryis a Polaroid: White tee-shirt, face both redand sun-gloried and hair crowned by bright blue; we are blindedby his grandness; in fact; in Toronto when says“If I don’t make it, keep trying”,we thinkhe’s just being a poet; today, far fromhis statue near Thunder Bay, the last mileposthe was able to thread sits off the shoulderof the Trans Canada, the switchgrass mowedby a local who was a boy whenTerry laid down and told the countrywhat we already knew: “If there is any wayI can get out here againand finish it again I will.”
Photo by Laya Clode on Unsplash