Auction
The way it goes so fast. All the neighbours out to pick over the bones. The old men wincing. Text on the button
Spruce Fire in a Wood Stove
We are reading poetry, you and I, and I am learning by rote the topography of your neck. My fingers memorizing your hidden rivulets and beautiful bones. Time stops but for the falling of snow, the muttering of the fire, the urgency of birds. Text on the button
Pop Goes the Weasel
Round and round go the songs in my heart. Mechanical surprise. CLICK ON RECORDING TO LISTEN
Heavy Rain off the Eaves
One man’s voice, a cat at home curled up on the paper and a phone bill overdue. Him, his voice, suddenly there, like a reflection in glass, a hand on your shoulder, and the wind is inside me, in the cage of my chest, swelling. One man’s voice. No greater than another’s. And perfect…
Frothing Milk
Sun on skin, we lizard in this clearing, two cups of coffee and an orange between us. It’s something I read once, that love is sharing an orange, and so we do, popping the sections into our mouths, into the dark places between words. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Hail on the train
The girl, small in my arms, and eyes wide at the violence of ice. We hurtle together toward home. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Dawn chorus of crows
The waking hour. Silver light through the trees and a high moan of boxcars dopplering. The house asleep. The baby breathing. Fear at my throat. Or at least loss, for tempus fugit: that old chestnut. Perhaps we could Peter Pan, forever moving west. Or maybe, as the poet said, west is Everywhere. A verb: we…
Lausanne Cows
Bells on the wind. Long grass bending to the herd and our feet tapping the rattle-clack of cobblestone Text on the button
Noon bells at St. Patrick’s
Real bells sounding. A man, his protege, and the spittle of Wednesday traffic. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Marine Weather Forecast
Every pond a scraping with its hem of cobblestone. An abandoned caribou skin translucent with weather rolls tufts of hair into the wind as heat rises from this bloodless land. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Fire on the Beach (Middle Cove)
Blue, veined with green, this is the colour of loss. A battered silver tea set the gift of hundreds, the new west sunk off the east. I pocket a piece of bone gnawed smooth by the hungry ocean. We are all dogs nosing amongst the rubble. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
16-week heartbeat
Tap tap tap tap. What’s your message little one? Tap tap tap tap. Are you a daughter or a son? CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
4-week baby nursing
It all comes down to this he said, Curious. That it all should come down. That it, in its sprawling it-ness, could, or would ever be, felled. The whole shebang. The whole enchilada. Kaput. Perhaps he meant this: the wide world shrunk to one room where everything that matters is this man, sleeping, his…
Zululand funeral
The valley walks this morning, hulking cowflesh lumbering toward water. Glossy coats twitching, and egrets busy with the earth at their feet. Another man lost to the virus today, his song echoing in our chests. And still there is a boy, his brother, his dog, a whip. And the road that leads us home.…
Lion Kill
Fear is a muscle: a single twitch and the teeth snap shut. CLICK ON RECORDING TO LISTEN
Durban Natural History Museum
Your voice, swaddled in tweed, and a map of the world where the sun never sets on Mum, not to mention her roses. Her cotton gloves. Her Columbus. These dead birds a siren for the likes of us, hunting Darwin, his shadow growing still. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Drakensburg Runners
A chorus of voices singing for courage. A battalion of women on Africa’s pointed toe. A way things end, like a pause in the sentence for breath. CLICK ON RECORDING TO LISTEN
Bushveldt Thunder
Bare feet on bare stone, straining for the silence of birds. The sun sets, the thunder rumbles and the plains roll on and on. CLICK ON RECORDING TO LISTEN
Mermaid
Suspended as though held by hands, I am silent as a fish, hiding my cumbersome legs. Lie back, lie back, they say, as the girls dance a shocking blue.
Propane truck
Valparaiso is an expletive of colour: naranja, azul, amarillo, verde, el color de los muscelos tires. All the flags hang their heads as afternoon shadows grow. Text on the button