Off the Masham-Eardley Road

November under a
fleece-shearing sky
we hike trail past
beaver-sharp poplars
a polyphony of birdcall
and chickadees like summer's
castoff leaves
scrabbling dirt.

We pass Mud Lake
dark and smooth as
      isinglass
white birch repeating
and repeating
on its surface
like a Thomson painting.

Shying toward us
over a granite litter
a lavender-coated mink
slinking white-bellied
to peer feverish eyes
then evaporate.

The forest is acrid
and a pheasant panics
the undergrowth in a
pandemonium of leaves.
A grouse flaps high
in the branches of an ash

and a woodpecker clowns
down-hanging a branch
like a drunken bat.
We meet other solitudes
in this Gatineau place.