UNEXPECTED
The gold of a waking, winter sun
paints its colour across my living room
wall.
A frosted filigree of silvered art
displays itself in a corner of the
window glass,
while tiny rainbows weave through
liquid-tipped icicles
hanging in frigid security from the
eave.
A swath of crystalline white on the
lawn
reveals itself as newly glazed snow
painted in the morning’s quickening
light.
And just now, the sky above the dark
houses
becomes a pale-blue canvas.
ALL ABOARD
All it took for my sister and me to fly
was a cardboard box
and some old tin cans for the motor.
That night we flew over tall trees
at the end of the driveway,
off into the cool, green twilight
of a September sky.
And it was only years later
that we were made to land.
RENEW
Go back before the sundering.
Before screams and breaking limbs,
falling skies, and breathlessness.
Back before dust first coats
bleeding half-gills
on stony shores.
Before the cooling, toffee-swirled rock
first scratches its dull, seed itch.
Go back to the dark bower
of the early world
when red seas and electric skies meet,
and where life has other possibilities.
TO HOPEFUL—
A FEW GOOD YEARS
Regret came to visit
Despair, who was at home.
Reluctance answered the door—
Bile was on her phone.
A Little Hopeless took his hat,
introducing him to Fear,
her beau and new acquaintance
(she’d broken up with Sneer).
Tea was served in the parlour
by Endless Without Omission,
an uncle from afar away,
who took Reject’s commission.
Dark Clouds then came racing in,
followed by Blind Luck.
The two were co-joined at the tale,
and positively stuck.
Inhibition clucked and frowned
at such a childish folly,
meanwhile cutting heart-shaped flowers
to make for Whimsy’s dolly.
And gathered round the tea tray
were guests and host and all,
in an awkward socializing
or else a suicide’s ball.
DISTANT SOUNDS
Like a stone arch over foaming waters,
words are a bridge between unknowns.
They sound and roar
like thunder in the mouth,
cascading across lips,
dreadful and appeasing
at the same time.
Once, they came in storms
that roiled
across
methane-green skies
and black, electric
seas
shaking ooze from rocks,
sound by
sound.
LAKEHEAD
You've nowhere to go
And nowhere to be.
Nowhere to empty
Except into me.
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