HABITAT

All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

– Mary Oliver, “Sleeping in the Forest”

Most of us feel a deep connection to the physical land we come from. At different times we may work its soil, appreciate its beauty, and marvel at its resilience. Prince Edward Island is renowned for its distinctive landscape, perhaps most famously its red cliffs contrasting vividly with blue oceans and green fields. These features attract crowds of tourists every year and are the pride of all who call PEI home. The authors in this chapter illustrate their connections to the landscape that they are a part of, and the ways in which it has shaped their view of the world. Although not all of the works are about Prince Edward Island, each depicts the sense of love and awe that the writer feels for the natural environment that they inhabit. Together, these pieces show how human beings change nature, as well as how we ourselves are changed by it.

Kylee Bustard’s poem “Fiona’s Toll” chronicles the sense of helplessness that was felt across Prince Edward Island on the night of September 23rd, 2022, as Hurricane Fiona destroyed fields and forests in her rage. By ending the poem with a reference to the seemingly endless waiting that occurred during and after the hurricane, Bustard emphasizes the ways in which our modern technologies are still no match for the forces of nature which leave humans “powerless” in more ways than one.

In her poem “Trees and Powerlines” Aurora Ryder displays the other side of Bustard’s point, showing how human beings can destroy nature’s work of many years in mere minutes. Told from the point of view of a tree, “Trees and Powerlines” takes the reader through the tree’s journey from a mere sapling to the mighty “king of all but sky.” At the end of the poem, the speaker is forced to confront the reality of reaching too far outside their own dominion, which powerfully demonstrates the tension between the natural and constructed worlds.

The theme of human impacts on the environment is continued in Jennifer Alexander’s “a deer swam from new brunswick to prince edward island.” In this poem, the reader is invited to reflect on the poignant story of the deer who swam from New Brunswick to PEI in October of 2022 and was killed by a transfer truck soon after arriving. The speaker in this poem uses the untimely death of the deer to challenge her own tendency to take time for granted, and to encourage the reader to take risks by occasionally venturing out of their own habitat.

Rebekah Coates’s poem “Lullaby of Remembrance” focuses on the solace that nature can bring in times of distress. The speaker relates a troubled history of living in a land that has long been plagued by slavery and war. It is the image of “home,” with its mountains, seas, and farmlands that encourages the speaker to endure until peace comes again. Beginning with a reference to the comforting “lullabies” of nature, Coates’s poem illustrates the way that familiar landscapes can offer peace during the most difficult circumstances in life.

Specific experiences of living in the environment of Prince Edward Island appear in two poems by Fiona Steele. The first, “Visiting Tourist Spots in Early May,” captures the “almost holy” experience of standing on a nearly empty PEI beach and experiencing the whispers of the wind before the mass arrival of summer tourists makes such intimate experiences impossible. In Steele’s other poem “On Moving Away,” the speaker tries to hold onto the feeling of being “held by this Island” as she prepares to leave it for a time. By acknowledging the Island’s “heartbeat” in the ocean’s crashing waves, Steele shows how the places we come from often seem as alive as we are.

All of the works in this chapter deal with the authors’ connections to the physical “habitat” in which they live—how it inspires them to create, reflect, and persevere through difficult circumstances. Their works depict how human beings witness nature, but also how we are a part of nature ourselves, and therefore feel a natural kinship with it. These six poems demonstrate how nature can both frighten and sustain us, and how we can love the natural world even as we realize how our activities harm it. It is a knowledge of our own place in nature and how it shapes us that keeps us connected to our roots, no matter what environments we might inhabit during our lives.

Claire MacPhee

Editor