Late-winter evening, a light snow, ...
Tag: Poem
Water, breath, air
Water, breath, air. Horse wet from the rain...
When he was a little boy … Elliott’s 15th-birthday poem
Every year, our friend Elliott gets a poem for his birthday. Here is this year's, along with an audio version.
August Rain
The year has turned
to the round month,
the orange one,
month of steam and droning bees,
time when we first remember
the end is tumbling near. ...
Un-fragment
rising through layers of dream / light / shadow mattress body blanket groping for the fragments strewn by night across the landscape of my bed pulling thread by thread knitting myself together as day breaks ~~~
Sadness, I instruct you
For my dear friend And now, sadness, I instruct you to be still. Let these bones rest. Marrow pale and depleted by memory and forgiveness, they are weary and cannot stand your shaking. Let the exhausted heart encased in this bombarded cage beneath my skin jarred by your gnashing and clamouring float in the buoyancy … Continue reading Sadness, I instruct you
Five Reasons to Love the Long Nights of Winter
This poem is one I wrote maybe a decade ago, but it still expresses something important to me about the beauty, peace, and comfort of this time of year.
After a bright afternoon’s quickening light
To be cradled by dusk,
Its slowly sit-down darkening
To contemplate the softening outline of the old cat
Curled warm on your grey-trousered lap
To watch the women and men with briefcases and backpacks
Walk from the bus toward darkened houses
To see a glow appear here or there and know
The tired homecomings have begun
To unravel the mysteries of your heart
That can only be glimpsed when the busy sun
Pulls up its thick shadows
And the arms of the evening encompass all
____________________
Ark
All night the wind filled with snow howls against our walls. What happens to the animals, or people still outside I do not know. Small ship on a vast ocean our house sails alone through the gale. Carries us fretting to the borders of morning, the furnace and the radio land ahoy. ~~~
Small offerings
The night's small offerings to the road are easy to lift: wrapped in a leaf or carried on a bier of two stout twigs an empty drink cup in the ditch will do if a scoop is needed Their still, often neat bodies of feathers and beaks of claws and fur tiny red stick legs … Continue reading Small offerings
My sleep is like
pearls on a worn string slipping down the line from one hour to the next of jewelled slumber but in between a frayed cord of anxious waking, hot turning, grasping for a lifeline that my sweaty touch disintegrates, dreams clattering to the floor and here I am again, awake ~~~
Ellen Symons Writes 