I know! Super proud moment for Canadians, too!
And in honour of that, here is a poem I once wrote about her. Better yet, she wrote me a letter about it!! YES! I am the proud possessor of a letter from Alice Munro!!
"Sharing the Fruits" (appeared
in The New Quarterly)
Last night, I
dreamed of Alice Munro. Yes,
the writer. The
one who wins all the prizes
and worse or
better yet, deserves them.
Alice and I were
at a large hotel,
late-stayers
after some grand event.
Apart from
stragglers, still shouldering coats and bags,
and some
waiters, who were stacking chairs
and calling out
to one another,
their voices desultory
and clipped,
we were alone –
and all around us crumbs,
crumpled
napkins, and lipstick tattooed wineglasses.
The lights came
up or on, and Alice said,
We might as well sit down.
So we climbed
three stairs to a dais
protected by
wrought-iron balusters
where we found
ourselves a table.
A white cloth
and some dirty plates lay on it.
I pushed the
plates aside.
Alice hooked her
purse on the back of her chair,
adjusted the
waistband of her dress, and tamed
a stray grey
curl. We sighed, well satisfied,
and settled down
to the serious business
of talk.
Alice spoke
charmingly. She has a crooked, knowing smile
and (in my dream
at least) she doesn’t stand on ceremony.
We had much to
discuss. The jobs we’ve shared, for instance.
Bookstore clerk.
Turkey gutter. Is this not an unusual coincidence?
At the room’s
perimeter, waiters faded in
and out of view,
but no one took our order.
Finally, with a
shrug that revealed her clavicles,
Alice angled an
eyebrow and announced,
Since they’ve left all this, we might as well eat it.
I couldn’t have
agreed more.
I poured us
miraculously hot coffee
from the hotel’s
metal pot –
and passed a
basket of croissants.
Our lips shone.
Butter coarse-coated the roofs
of our mouths.
Our conversation percolated.
Then (as happens
in dreams – in my dreams, anyway,
and I suspect in
yours) the basket vanished
and in its place
appeared a hill of chiffon scarves.
Amethyst,
crimson, periwinkle, rose,
saturated
colours, shot with silver threads,
they were
rumpled, braided, and as knotted
as the strands
of one of Alice’s stories, I might have said
but didn’t.
How do you suppose we untangle these, asked Alice,
and glad to be
of service, shocked to find
that I could do
a thing she couldn’t –
even something
as trivial as this –
I set to work.
Smoothing them, untying them,
releasing all
their folds, the silk between my fingers
the same texture
as the pastry on my tongue,
I spread them
out before us, one by one,
a marvellous
mille-feuille,
beautiful as
dawn. Delicious, too –
eating them was
like eating the summer air.
Of course, we
were still just as hungry afterwards.
I would like an orange, said Alice,
an orange, or possibly an apple.
The waiters
continued to ignore us
as waiters will,
in dreams, and after all,
they had the
clean-up to take care of –
a fact that
Alice and I were aware of.
So we sat until
another basket appeared,
just as we
thought it would.
Beneath a
starched white napkin
two freshly
baked potatoes squatted.
Alice eyed them
avidly.
Their skins brown
and yielding, their flesh crumbling and hot,
we slathered
them in butter, strewed them with salt and
dug in.
