BIBEAU’S ESTATE
At first they dismiss the fantastical images, make-believe floral hallucinations, until they realize this is Bibeau’s sketchbook from boyhood explorations of peat bogs deep in the north woods, far from the truant officers who knew him by name. Pitcher plants, sundew, orchids or lilies, muddy thumbprints on the edges of a few pages, and a landscape/self-portrait of bog ringed by spruce, Bibeau’s one foot bare and one in its boot in the foreground, testament of a misstep on the floating mat that sucked off boot and sock and might have held young Bibeau fast forever, if not for his strength even as a boy, “Bibeau Bibeau built like a bus” as his schoolmates used to sing. Bibeau’s bog, under Bibeau’s sky, in the spring of Bibeau’s life, all in Bibeau’s own hand.