The silence was the most disturbing part. The whole world standing staring at these metal sinews tripped and quick-frozen. Now with summer at its heaviest, the air burning with the ingratitude of August and the back-and-forthing of combines. There’s been much hail — we’ve huddled tsk-tsking, watching the sky like a felon. What did we…
The birds and the reeds and the morning cows knee-deep in muck. Empty bleachers where the sky used to live. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
Home is horseflesh, this salty lick across the prairies. A silver sky threatening rain. Home is these empty barns and the trail, still warm. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
The way it goes so fast. All the neighbours out to pick over the bones. The old men wincing. Text on the button
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
Round and round go the songs in my heart. Mechanical surprise. CLICK ON RECORDING TO LISTEN
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…
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
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
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…
Bells on the wind. Long grass bending to the herd and our feet tapping the rattle-clack of cobblestone Text on the button
Real bells sounding. A man, his protege, and the spittle of Wednesday traffic. CLICK ON THE RECORDING TO LISTEN
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
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
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
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…
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.…
Fear is a muscle: a single twitch and the teeth snap shut. CLICK ON RECORDING TO LISTEN
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
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