Cnoc on Chairs Famine Graveyard
Bríd Ni Mhóráin
(May all who sleep here have sight of the Trinity 21 November 1990) Cnoc an Chairn sheds its deep peace Under the encircling hills and heavens O...
Author: Deirdre Kessler
Something About Snow
Brent MacLaine
SOMETHING ABOUT SNOW Something about snow today—its flatness in the cold, windless field. The pale sun tries but fails to warm it, even though it ...
Pillars of Creation
Judy Gaudet
PILLARS OF CREATION Solar winds are blowing up the pillars of the Eagle Nebula 7000 light years away from Eldon, where terrestrial winds are shapi...
Great-Grandmother’s Garden
Richard Lemm
GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S GARDEN Pansies have the faces of lost children. Iris unfurls its violet flag for my son churned into the mud of France. Foxg...
This is How I Connect with You
Yvette Doucette
THIS IS HOW I CONNECT WITH YOU all lissom-like the elm trees bend seawind lifts and scents my hair my tongue flattens, no a, e, i, or u to round t...
Picnic Rock
Thomas O'Grady
An old album, a thumb-scuffed photograph, black and white, circa 1964: centred, hair tied back by a windblown scarf, my mother in slacks and blouse...
Jack’s Trail
Bren Simmers
Let’s call this paint chip 4 p.m. green. Lichen, liverwort. Moss burgeoning into topo folds enters ankles, backs of knees, hip creaks. Call this...
Everything Returns, Eventually…
Laurie Brinklow
for Frank Ledwell Frank Ledwell (1930–2010) was a writer and poet who mentored thousands of Prince Edward Islanders—including me—in his role as...
Days, Weeks, Months, Year
Deirdre Kessler
DAYS, WEEKS, MONTHS, YEAR Individual days, weeks, months: unbound! Flung up into the air, released from meaning. Who cares for you? Alice says to t...
Blueberry Jam
Roderick MacDonald
BLUEBERRY JAM On a hidden shelf In a jar of heavy glass Deep, dark, and thick Preserved while time has passed In the dusty basement With heirloo...
If I Could Say
Leon Berrouard
IF I COULD SAY That I love you From the bottom of my heart But that would be a cliché So, instead, I love you from The bottom of my brain And a...
Making the Sky
Judy Gaudet
MAKING THE SKY Wet the sky thoroughly right down to the treeline. Wrap it round the strait. First add the brightness, leaving either nothing or ...
Off Season
Bren Simmers
OFF SEASON Tonight, I don’t have to play the crowd, tell the story of the Christmas owl who hitched a ride home on a fir trunk. Walk the trail ...
Early Morning Mist
Brent MacLaine
EARLY MORNING MIST A soft breath has come to earth. It must have paused a moment before lowering its gentle weight upon the autumn fields, before ...
We: An Apologia
Steve McOrmond
WE: AN APOLOGIA We loved the idea of trees and occasionally to stroll among them. We loved how quiet the city when it snowed and the view from the...
Grandmothers
Yvette Doucette
GRANDMOTHERS they come from the other places the Jewish one, the Jamaican one her ancestor shipped from Africa to work cane they find her, their k...
See-e-ooh
Charlie Greg Sark
SEE-E-OOH that poem written twenty— … no, it was eighteen years ago. That poem, I wrote it for harper and I called it enemy tongues. Her...
What I Wanted to Be
Richard Lemm
WHAT I WANTED TO BE A dandelion and buttercup bouquet on grandmother’s vanity, the wasps in the pears, the long white jet plane’s tail in the ...
In Our Lifetime
Bren Simmers
IN OUR LIFETIME Tomatoes too thirsty, priced out of reach along with almonds, peaches. We’re running out of cheap oil—like the ivory-billed wo...
Bee Funeral
Sandy McCarney
In fifth grade Crybaby and Almost- Boobs hoarded curios in a Kleenex box: hunks of rock shaped like pizza slices, gel pens’ worn-out tips. Crud....
My Mother
Judy Gaudet
MY MOTHER she survives and smiles no the hail has not struck there that danced and crashed our party and the sun has reappeared chased cumulus to...
A Gift of Blueberries
Lobie Daughton
A GIFT OF BLUEBERRIES This secret place. This juice that blooms upon my lips, that coats my fingertips. This purple harvest that I search for on...
untitled
Bren Simmers
Strollers stake out shady maples while kids ride noodles in the wading pool, bob in water wings. Moms up to their knees cool off, while tweens s...
Pond Lullaby
Jane Ledwell
POND LULLABY Sleep, my damselfly, wings pressed in mute prayer. Cease, my whirligig, spinning pond-skin to air. Let all water striders take rest fr...
How Could You Forget This?
Chris Bailey
HOW COULD YOU FORGET THIS? Don’t forget where you came from. Simple. Easy like dropping a slut rock tied to a herring net off the boat’s stern,...
Professor Schwarz
John Flood
PROFESSOR SCHWARZ (eminent judge of poetry contests) imagine a poem in which there is no funny or sad this is not that poem imagine a poem in w...
The Photographer of Snowflakes
Steve McOrmond
THE PHOTOGRAPHER OF SNOWFLAKES As a boy, he tried to sketch them, but his pencil couldn’t scurry fast enough before the designs melted or sublime...
The Feet of Blue Herons
John MacKenzie
A FLEET OF BLUE HERONS If you happen to live in another town, Or country, or even galaxy As dim and distant in time as in space From these words, ...