Jo (so young) went west to wild rose country to Heart River country, a ruby red rose between her teeth the thorns keeping her silent secret, unheralded, even unseen, baby girl Lewis became, and became imaginary, perfect as the Hope Ruby Jo (so wild) sits in the silver square of the same moon […]
Six Rubies for Lyn on her birthday Read More »
Locked in the windowless bathroom, she listened to water sing in the pipes, a soothing refuge from uncalled for noise, the bang of a door, or maybe the clang of a balcony rail. O ever blend sounds to dull sonic grey smooth out incomprehensible talk with thrumming wheels humming fridges whiney grinding air conditioners
A year ago I reread Phoebe Wang’s poem Invasive Carp and was inexplicably taken with a word she used – stanchion. From the word and it’s etymology and associations grew eight pages of musings and stabs at scraps of verse. I’d also had in mind for many years a favourite old photograph of snow fencing
August 6 and 9 are the 75th anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I am rereading John Hersey’s account of six hibakusha, literally “explosion-affected persons”, thinking of the tiny lanterns set afloat on the river each August, and the Hiroshima memorial/museum, which, if I had a bucket list, would be on it.
what could we give you, tiny jewelled shrine which bears all gifts, you, so perfectly gifted? evening sky eyes, scintillate, our stardust past made present delicate mouth, oracular, we bow before its wordless wisdom cinnamon spun silk hair swirls in the merest breath of air pearl-tipped fingers strum our heartstrings’ silver tones sugar sweet
a poem for Mila Grace Read More »
Every musée needs a display. That was the conceit behind my wish to add a poem, in the form of a ‘label’, to Vicky’s wonderful assemblage, on view in Gallery. An ekphrastic poem is at once description, reflection, expansion of a work of art (or – god forbid- its meaning.) What came to mind was
Here is a poem I wrote on the occasion of Canada’s 150th birthday, initially inspired by the first line of Gwedolyn MacEwan’s Dark Pines Under Water….”This land like a mirror turns you inward”. What followed was four plus pages of notes about Canada and the notions of big-C and little-c country. I completed a version
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee the bell’s clear ring sweet purification for you it sings the flowering of earthly creation’s a bell’s pure ring and signalling our deep veneration how true it sings far echoing long reverberation the bell’s deep ring
A Slender Villanelle for a Bell Read More »