carla funk: messengers

All mouth and throbbing with the need to
speak they arrive, heels printing into the earth
a colon: the introduction of much
to come. They stand outside
dreams at the foot of your bed, scrolls of their tongues
unfurling, important, blessed tongues
written with indelible ink.

Listen. Someone is dying. Even this
made beautiful.
                            Proclaim the glory of everyday
life, bruises and the sweet flesh of earlobe. Swallow
the love you are given.
                            Hear me. Unto you a gift is given, no
strings attached. You are favoured. You are
whole.
              Fall on your face and seek wine in the dry 
valley. Find flesh among bones. Miracles
are prepared for the tasting.


And you startle at their voices, each
syllable a fire-fly in the ear, flicker and spark
upon waking. This may have been a dream, this
may have been more.

Funk, Carla. "Messengers" Introductions: Poets Present Poets. Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2001.

george whipple: a hymn to God the Father

O God invisible as music, let me know
Thee in the least reflection of Thy much,
in termite, tick and earwig, in the glow-
worm striking matches on the dark, the house-
fly scratching his humungous-huge orbed head;
in all the creepy, crawly, earthbound things,
the bandy ant in black fatigues, the slow
gelatinous, fat snail.

                               Although I climb
to Thee in prayers that fall as if unsaid,
O Alpha and Omega, Logos, great I AM,
I know Thee in the nit, mosquito, flea;
in pollywog, boll weevil, gnat and louse
- and with the praying mantis, worship Thee.


Whipple, George. "A Hymn to God the Father" Introductions: Poets Present Poets. Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2001.

helen tsiriotakis: shadow hand

Another girl who presents herself as a memory.
One more shape of memory.

The girl approaches the wall, casting a shadow. With chalk she traces her own image, diving down the cliff neck, climbing a hill shoulder, following the length of a long torso. To maintain the shape, she knows she must keep still. She must also keep the distance. If she pinpoints the light, chalkdust draws out her obscurity, radiating messy confessions: under prescriptive scrutiny, she blurs the look of the lens. When she’s too far, lifelines withdraw. She associates with the tip of any diversion. She stands this way for hours, outlining the memory of her body. Until she reaches the part of the wall where her hand collides with the shadow’s hand. No matter the impression she leaves, she confronts her own solitude. Her chalk can’t embody the hand that holds it. This is her alternate route: placing the chalk in her left hand, her right hand leaning against the wall.

Her right hand leaning against the wall.

Tsiriotakis, Helen. "Shadow Hand" Introductions: Poets Present Poets. Markham: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2001.

miriam waddington: advice to the young

1

Keep bees and

grow asparagus,

watch the tides

and listen to the

wind instead of

the politicians

make up your own

stories and believe

them if you want to

live the good life.

2

All rituals

are instincts

never fully

trust them but

study to im-

prove biology

with reason.

3

Digging trenches

for asparagus

is good for the

muscles and

waiting for the

plants to settle

teaches patience

to those who are

usually in too

much of a hurry.

4

There is morality

in bee-keeping

it teaches how

not to be afraid

of the bee swarm

it teaches how

not to be afraid of

finding new places

and building in them

all over again.

Waddington, Miriam. "Advice to the Young" The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1982.

national poetry month begins tomorrow!

this year is the 10th anniversary of national poetry month in canada (and 15th anniversary in the united states), and as such i will be posting a poem by a canadian poet (or two) each day of april. you can find out more here. to quote john steffler, parliamentary poet laureate:

We live inside language, shape and share ourselves with it and use it to handle the surrounding world. In an atmosphere of job-talk, technical jargon, sales pitches, sound bites, bureaucratese and grocery-store chitchat we get mental asthma, we shrink to anaemic fragments. Poetry, with its fireman’s axe, comes to the rescue, opening doors and windows we’d forgotten we had, reviving words slumped in heaps in the basement of our mind, and those resuscitated words are oxygen in our blood. How good it feels to have depths and energy, to share in the hungers and insights poetry radiates. Poetry is language fully alive, excited language, which conveys and generates an excited experience of life.