Weaving time
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.
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‘I like your scarf’
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
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Arts & Culture | Food | Poetry
Cabbages is beautiful
In cabbage, each leaf laid /
so closely against another, /
creation is unfurling . . . -
Reversal
The boy’s tongue is thick /
and inexact /
and his lips will not arrange themselves . . . -
It’s like forgiveness
The long stroke of raven’s oar /
dips into deep sky and cuts across /
the fast-moving shadow of a turkey vulture. -
Clearing ground
Trimming red lantana I have neglected /
reveals leaves long turned to mulch, /
blackening the ground. I saw my father this morning . . . -
My children growing older
Another laughing scream, and I send them all outdoors. /
Out, out! -
Johan
last night / who pops up in my head? / johan / slender little johan / i wish / we had grown up together
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Tell me what the poets are doing
June is a month for poets, a sun-soaked month of roses and easy rhymes. Soon, moon, croon and all that jazz. It is easy to look at the lush growth and beauty all around and turn to nature poems. I read an article recently about the differences between nature poetry and eco poetry. Eco poetry…
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Plunging obscurity
Screen-stained fingertips, / blue-lit fingerprints. / Is humanness obsolete? / A like; a follow; a friend. / A city’s patronage / blunted by estranged neighbours.
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Poetic reflections on a rural way of life
“Don’t tell me what the poets are doin’.” So wrote Gord Downie, the late leader singer of the well-known Canadian band The Tragically Hip, in 1998. Perhaps he didn’t mean this sentiment all that personally or seriously (he also published his own poetry collection with the not so serious title Coke Machine Glow). A serious…
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The water dipper
Dented, squat, aluminum cylinder, with a flat handle / the length of a child’s forearm. It hangs on a nail / beside a five-gallon crock of well water that sits on a shelf / just inside a fly-stippled screen door.
