A gift of Island poetry
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...
Author: Deirdre Kessler
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
Judy Gaudet | Making the Sky
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 ...
A gift of Island poetry
Bren Simmers | Off Season
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 ...
A gift of Island poetry
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 ...
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
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...
A gift of Island poetry
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
Tomatoes too thirsty, priced out of reach along with almonds, peaches. We’re running out of cheap oil—like the ivory-billed woodpecker last sp...
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
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 blue sky ...
A Gift of Blueberries
Lobie Daughton
This secret place. This juice that blooms upon my lips, that coats my fingertips. This purple harvest that I search for on the briny bank beneat...
A gift of Island poetry
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 o...
Pond Lullaby
Jane Ledwell
Sleep, my damselfly, wings pressed in mute prayer. Cease, my whirligig, spinning pond-skin to air. Let all water striders take rest from their strid...
How Could You Forget This?
Chris Bailey
Don’t forget where you came from. Simple. Easy like dropping a slut rock tied to a herring net off the boat’s stern, sidestepping rusted chains...
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 which bear goes over the river to see what he can see ...
The Photographer of Snowflakes
Steve McOrmond
As a boy, he tried to sketch them, but his pencil couldn’t scurry fast enough before the designs melted or sublimed in air. He wanted to hold the...
The Feet of Blue Herons
John MacKenzie
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, this language, the narro...