More on: Poetry

Occasionally, she would indulge / in controlled acts of remembrance, / letting the distant world intrude. / She found this sometimes helpful / to her investigations, but a little / went a long way.

Beginning and beginning again, / the eye opens to see the border / of its galaxy and finds there a snake.

The sound I imagine / you make has to / hold me and wake / me to its own kind / of internal return.

But innocence / / Is not responsibility / cleansed by command / And water, lifted, can but flee / the trembling hand.

A psalm for the plague year by Philip Metres: “Loss, you have been our regent, / Refusing the refugees / you sent. / / Truly we’re boxed in an annex / Of the mansion / of your text.”

I felt / the soil-dark downward / proof of being, the earth / an appetite, an almost-love, the air / a meeting ground, / the whole of seeing / seeable

N 58° 10.684’  W 125° 45.021’ Muskwa Kechika, Homelands of the Kaska Dene, Treaty 8 and Tsay Keh Nations   First snow briefly on the backs of moving animals in the high altitudes. At the lake’s edge I’m waiting for the hour when the pain makes sense. The loon’s empty dance hall levitates. Several unproven…

i ———Where did it come from, this call ———to the interior— you will tree plant in BC forests, four hour by chopper from Prince George. The cork boots, belt and shovel bandanas and bungees, tin stove and tarp all packed, the many days drive in an ancient van sealed with shiny hope and duct tape.…

I remember the clouds yesterday— cow-belly low and heavy, pregnant with Irish rain— the way they hugged Quinn Abbey. clouds the colour of stones, shale grey and lichen-shadowed. ———Masses lighter than the ones on that first ———chemo morning, heavy rain sliding ———down the pane, as my son knelt ———beside the shocking yellow puke and bile.…

The lake has a provisional name. It has had other names. It’s possible those names were also in some way provisional, unless the lake has a name for itself. Facing it, it’s feasible to believe that the lake really does have a name, one it has given to itself and that it keeps. It keeps…