21 January

Get used to it


The salmon is chilly
by the time it’s traveled
all the way across the town
from the rally at the union hall
to the downpour on this picket line,
but it tastes like freedom,
and I swallow its stubborn flesh,
suck its determined bones,

then stumble from the brief warmth
of the strike trailer
into the shock of sudden night,
the dissonance of three
big brilliant picket umbrellas
pitched like circus tents
on the long blackness
of asphalt glittering
beneath the only streetlight.

Under the rain I begin to compose
the photograph I cannot capture,
I say the words out quiet:
“Remember, remember everything,”
then dive beneath
the startling blue and white
pie slices of Al’s umbrella.
“It’s a nice picture,”
I tell him, by way of explanation.
“Well, get used to it,” he says.

Twenty years ago today in Hoquiam, Washington, USA, the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers’ strike for equal pay for equal work against ITT Rayonier was ending in defeat. I had taken comfort on that picket line for the long months of my mother’s illness and on the night of her death. I knew it was time to go when we burned the furniture from the picket shack at the Ontario Street gate, then tore that rude structure down, but I wasn’t ready. I could still taste the chilly salmon, still see those umbrellas against the asphalt in the rain. I had gotten used to it, then it was gone.