I’m remembering church picnics. It’s summer nostalgia, of course. The wind in the trees outside my window and the sound of kids playing. I’m leaving church after the service and thinking about watermelon, remembering the tote bag my mom put the thermos in and the way she folded a travelling rug on top and the…
A blindingly bright January morning. /
In the distance ahead, to the east, /
a wink, /
a glint of metallic shimmer.
On the day that hate rode into town /
We visited our neighbor in her new home /
She is over 90 years old
After the city, the garden /
is quiet, the leaves green /
enough to absorb every cry.
WHAT PERSISTS /
there is the void /
there is the heavy immovable stone . . .
Can there be resurrection /
among the ruins? /
Dare we imagine new life /
rising from these streets of death?
Children crack palm nuts milked of fats, / stripped of orange. They smack / nuts on rocks, split out the kernel of ndika . . .
I believe in the great discovery.I believe in the man who made the discovery.I believe in the fear of the manwho made the discovery . . . This is the beginning of the poem “Discovery” by the Nobel laureate, Polish poet Wisława Szymborska (pronounced ShimBORska). It was first published in a 1972 collection. Poland was…
it grows back fully / Six days after the flames / black bears return for berries. / The restoration / of the world leaks /through a broken dam
Mary spins and the thread twists / at just the right moment. / The tension tight, she winds it / on the shaft and then smoothly presses another bit of wool, / pinches the thread, sees it wind into true.
Says the mom, picking her kid up from / daycare / “I like your scarf” / Says the teenager in Dundas Square / “I like your scarf” / Says the woman in the grocery store as I reach for the eggs / We all smile gently as we gesture / At our own chests, our own hearts
In cabbage, each leaf laid /
so closely against another, /
creation is unfurling . . .
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