misaskwatomin

this is how you misaskwatomin
(don't Saskatoonie me though I'm twice the loonie
to be born here and then move back to stay)

five-pointed day-glow star
ripening in sun to a constellation
of tiny purple moons orbiting the bush

kohkums pointing with lips because hands were busy
and didn't want to give offence, anyway
"don't forget to leave some for the birds"

if only the winged ones showed the same consideration
for us purple-hungering
two-leggeds

holding the space

Twenty years old was too young for you to full-time mom, you said.

"I want to be the best mom, not just a good one. Good moms do hard things."

You quit the job you loved,

stretch-markingly lost your 32 inch waist for 36 weeks,

went into labour watching a movie with your dad,

were c-sectioned because otherwise you both died

pumped milk in NICU

and chose a matching set of parents who would double you.

Because at twenty you were wiser than many, and you knew this would be

the hardest choice

for the best life for both.

I told you heroes don't feel like heroes

and your silence agreed, heroically.

Tension

refugee pension, Germany, 1993

As she passes me the tea cup,

the Albanian massage therapist

notices the stiffness

in my shoulders,

says Come.

I lie face down

on the bed she hasn’t made,

the smell of her night sweat

on the patchwork.

Beside my limp right arm,

a torn photo of Stari Most,

the ancient bridge from her home

to her shop and library and park,  

before it burned.

Souvenir

On my lap, the tarnished

spoons from Opa’s travels.

Maps etched into their curves,

tiny ads glued to their handles.

Arizona prickly pear,

Lady liberty, Bodensee.

From California, a castle

dangles. All the places

Opa left me for. Always

returning. The shiny evidence

that he remembered me.

One spoon has lost

its decal. Holding  

its mirrored face

close to mine,

I see the last place

he has gone.

Omand's Creek: May

Thank you!

untitled

What was it that flew past just now?

A bird? A wind-borne yellow leaf?

A stone flung up into the air,

no particular target in mind? Was it

a thought hurtling so fast

it could not be caught in the mind’s net?

Did the mind itself or the hand

trigger the motion? Or Someone

else? And what

has the heart to do with it?

Lime-green week

Catch them while you can, the bird-days
of migratory spring. Leaves of wild rose, elm, lilac
beginning to fan out their pleats, let sunlight iron
their folds, not yet a covert for the birds, still just a beaded
curtain. Between its strands the warblers trill from bush
to bush, flash their yellows of breast, throat, or crown.
Lime-green luminous, the brightness of young-
again earth, even the slow oaks misted with green.
These early-morning days of growth and flight—
catch them now before the green darkens,
the heat settles in. Catch them while they're new,
while you're still astonished, and the wing-rustle
of a thrush can still knock you over.

For us

(Thanks for your comments.)