The Bridge Review: Merrimack Valley Culture

Paul Marion

Parlez-vous?

Pierre Bouchard's sports-talk radio show
finds its way from Montreal to my room,
the chatty French fading in and out;
I'm picking up key words, leaning towards
the Panasonic Solid-State portable.
In the dark I reached over to fine-tune
a Boston station and on the signal's edge
caught a Canadian phone call in mid-flight -
the cold clear December air a blue net,
the stars like a connect-the-dots game
transmitting my root tongue,
language of those who carried my name down
and down through Quebec backwoods, villages,
down through New England hills,
down through pine-cone valleys
to this mill town whose brick factories
make a great red wall along the river.
Bouchard and his callers talk football, hockey;
a commercial praises lovely Montreal,
Paris of North America, cosmopolitan hive.
They wish each other "Joyeux Noël,"
voices blinking slowly like fancy tree lights.

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