18 Echo Chamber
I
step inside and there are no whispers no warm currents suggesting presence. It is empty as the Shield,* blank as snowswept prairies. Walls of stainless steel, floors of polished marble, ceiling domes of flawless glass with cloudless sky beyond. If there is a desk it is bare and broad. I write here without tapestries or cushions or rugs or paintings — for these all hold impressions and breath. I write in the absence of cupboards. There are no baskets of letters no stacks of magazines no hanging files and no one making breakfast in the kitchen. I can write here without anyone listening or waiting or tiptoeing in with tea. This is the place of pure expression. There will be no readers. No questions no comments no acclaim. Any word I put down on the page will vanish like a kiss on the cool surface of my mirror.
*The Canadian Shield (also known as Bouclier Canadien, the Precambrian Shield, and the Laurentian Plateau) is a massive geographic area of bare rock covered by a thin layer of soil, taking up roughly 8 million square kilometers of central and eastern Canada.
Karen McPherson is an Oregon poet. She has published poems in a number of journals, including Poetry Motel, Fireweed and Descant, and in the 2006 Lane Literary Guild chapbook Dona Nobis Pacem. She is also a professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Oregon and author of Incriminations: Guilty Women / Telling Stories (1994) and Archaeologies of an Uncertain Future: Recent Generations of Canadian Women Writing (2006). Contact Karen