Heidi Watts

I was unprepared for the beauty of a June day on the La Have islands: old homesteads surrounded with perennials: daffodils waving bravely in a fierce wind; narcissus decorating  stone outcroppings and perfuming the air; blooming lilacs drawing in as much of the surrounding land as they could manage in a year and so slowly eating up the paths and fields around them; wood trails carpeted with  four petaled bunch berry, the white petals morphing into red berries by winter.   I was unprepared for just about everything that first summer in Nova Scotia. The previous summer we had traveled by VW bus like a mess of itinerant gypsies to stay   in my sister’s house on Bell Island. I had two small children, my English mother-in-law and an increasingly difficult case of morning sickness; Simon had a broken wrist and his arm in a cast but managed, nonetheless, to put the small sailboat   we were trailing behind the bus into the water and sail off (literally) single-hande...

Who knows what admirable virtue of fishes may be below the low-water-mark, bearing up against a hard destiny, not admired by that lone creature who can appreciate it! Who hears the fishes when they cry?    – Henry David Thoreau It was a fair morning in June, the sea a calm cerulean blue, sparkling in the reflected sunlight. A few terns plummeted head first in the water and came up with something small and silvery wiggling on the end of the beak, and in the woods behind the house a song sparrow cranked up for the trill. I was cranking up the wood stove for breakfast and the children were stirring in the back bedroom. Out the kitchen window I could see the fishing boats coming in, a working man’s regatta of white and brightly painted Cape Island and double-ended fishing boats. The seagulls swirled above them in patterns of calligraphy washed across the cloudless morning sky and added their cries to the sound of the motors, the swosh of the parting waters. Dimly, c...

I stood on the deck and raised my hand to shade my eyes from the glare of the sun, low in the sky now, but leaving it slowly these long June days. "Rebecca", I said, to the long-legged   eleven year   old beside me, "Who do you think that could be?" There was no reply. Rebecca was lying on   her belly,   her head hung over the edge of   the dock,   absorbed in the antics   of a rock crab, wavering in and out of the brown and yellow weed below the pilings. The bright   yellow,   double-ended   dory   came efficiently   through   the shimmery haze on the water,   the oars dipping cleanly   with   the   long pull of an experienced fisherman. It might be David Hirtle, but   the dark   back   was too   slight.... It   might   be... "Oh, it's Peter   Baker."   The boat   was   close enough now   to   reveal the silhouette   of ...

In, out, up, back, advance, retreat Immutable, inexorable, indefatigable The tide and I play tag. Puff balls of spun spray skitter down the beach. Dissolve in mid-air Come to rest in the wrack of the tide line. I stop to look : a silvery filigree of tiny bubbles Rainbows in the big ones Nesting in wind tossed, homeless eelgrass. Behind me, footprints fill with icy water, The bossy wind shoves and pushes Suddenly one sneaker is cold and wet Tagged by the tide .   I hear voices but see no people. To the north the line drawn by tide on sand Shrinks to a uninterrupted point in blue haze. To the east the white horses toss their manes (Impossible to resist that ancient imagery). To the west, a towering wall of sandy cliff Denies the advancing calvary. And to the south,   Only the blustering beautiful sea   Overhead, Oh! Two geese just checkin’ in, Dark silhouttes in the bright morning sun. I shield my eyes from t...

The Shop on Bell’s Island   Is it open, I asked myself, glancing at once, from habit, to see whether the small iron bar of the latch extended over the crack between door and frame.   Open, I decided, since no interruption in the space was visible.   Other shops with which I was familiar advertise their willingness to take your money loudly, with signs, flashing lights, or at least an “Open” sign.   Not the shop on Bell’s Island. Only if that 2 inches of iron bar was drawn to the left rather than the right could you be sure, in spite of the dark window and the silence encasing the shop like smoke, that there would be someone inside.   Although the proprietor’s house was less than thirty feet from this center of commerce, on this isolated island of approximately ten families, the shop was never left unlocked.   If the door was unbarred either Malcolm or Jessie would be inside.   Today it was Malcolm, Mr. Baggett, leaning back in his s...