Month: May 2019

The river finally broke up on May 13. It had actually broken up in many other places already over the previous weeks, but Tulita was still frozen in.

Due to the staggered breakup this year, not much ice was left on the shore.

The word had spread around
The stiff and frozen Deh Cho
Had spoken a great sound.

A crack had rent the stillness
A violent monologue
A call all through the taiga plains
That were fast becoming bog.

It woke the sleeping grizzlies
It startled the poor moose
It told the wolf and caribou
That the ice was coming loose.

And the flying geese had heard it
And the musk ox on Bear Rock
And the dogs of men, dumb has they were,
Recognised the new epoch.

Had the ice at long last broken?
Had it risen, had it surged?
Had the waters of Mackenzie
Finally reemerged?

To the banks they all descended
To rocky shore they milled
To leaping fish, the spring at last,
Yet soon their fervour stilled.

For the surface was unbroken
For the road, it had not budged
For the breakup of that old Deh Cho
Had been once again misjudged.

So, forlorn, they headed homeward
So they scanned that slushy snow
So once more they said amongst themselves
“I bet it breaks up t’morrow”.