Sharon Frayne
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15/01/2021
Today, I'm the featured writer in Joan Dempsey's Gutsy Great Novelist Writers Studio. Here's my response to the question: When did you first realize you wanted to write a novel? Was there a particular person or experience that inspired you?

​My younger sisters' bedroom adjoined mine, with nightly consequences. I invented a communication code and taped it to the back walls of our side-by side closets. Long after we were supposed to be asleep, I'd go into the closet and communicate with them through a series of special knocks. Taking two flashlights, I crawled into the dark hallway and shone lights on the back wall of their bedroom. The wild, invented stories began. Often, they were inspired by a children's novel I'd just read. It was important to keep this a secret from our parents, who'd ruin all the fun if they knew!

Knock, knock. Time for a story.

Poets and Painters - April 21st

3/6/2018

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The Shadow River
A Tribute to Pauline Johnson
 
A concrete bridge crosses it now
 
​I parked on the graveled highway shoulder
and portaged the asphalt ribbon
that runs from Rosseau to Georgian Bay.
The sign said
 
                                                                                          Shadow River
 
Narrow, shallow, tea-coloured water
curving through bushy foliage and dense forest firs,
it disappears around a curve into an abstraction of green
and turquoise.
 
A string of hydro lines spans the river,
poles sunk into the marsh it drains,
casting the only trace of humanity onto the surface,
caught in the looking glass
and the silence of the shadow river,
 
a mirror and a time tunnel
where once Pauline Johnson paddled.
 
I trace the outline, at the border, a fine line:
pictures above and below, all defying an orderly sense of vision,
blending old logging routes and modern growth,
balancing ancient solitude and present communication
 
 floating and dreaming in wooden canoes

Of filmy sun, and opal-tinted skies,
of clouds of snow, above and below. They drifted with her drifting,
through brownish hills with needles green and gold,
and not a ripple moved to mar
the mirrored surface.

(A little fern bent upon the brink. Its green reflection
met a bubble in the pearly air.
My leaf floating upon the sapphire floor,
like in a dream.)
 
Two pathless worlds — her past, my present --
collide on an August afternoon
in the untamed country
on the river that was once a highway
and is now a bridge.
 
We only claimed the shadows and the dreaming.
 
 
 
 
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    Author

    Sharon Frayne is a writer and artist. She is a member of the Canadian Author's Association, the Niagara Writer's Circle and the Pumphouse Art Gallery. She looks for the universal experience and the mystery in everyday things.

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