We fly home from summerwith Che t-shirts and tans.As we leave the airportJanuary rasps in our ears.
The frosted taxi window numbs un-mittened fingersas we try to scratch back to yesterday.Already the afternoon is slippinginto something black and dangerous.I’m forgetting the sky’s largesse and howturquoise seas clear a congested heart.
In the middle of the nightmetal teeth […]
After years of breakfast pancakes
bathed in maple syrup,
kids playing hockey beneath
a Chinook sky with
pink and purple sunrises that set
gold over silhouette Rockies,
cries of “have a nice day,”
I think I’m Canadian.
But four weeks into a trip home
where damp grey days circle each other,
history lurks beneath every brick
every ancient oak,
we’re offered faggots with mushy peas
in accents thick […]
The women in the airport
Rent-a-Car office
had no maps of Birmingham
6 a.m. one Sunday,
said no one ever wants to go
to Birmingham
so we felt our way
through sixteen-year mists
past three children
new buildings, old memories,
along shrunken arteries
constricted with parked cars
and suddenly there we were
the house so much smaller
than when I left.
~ Frances Hern
Frances Hern writes poetry, non-fiction and children’s […]
In the newly fallen snow, crows
scatter at the approach of cars,
uncovering the carcass
of a deer, the twin curves
of its ribcage exposed like cupped
hands around a match, except there is no flame
in the white arch, pale white
with a few stringy streaks of red.
Is this Actaeon’s fate? To finally outrun
his pack of hounds – trained by him
to […]
Between the painted yellow lines, the cars
and trucks and jeeps wait. Lined-up, orderly.
But there is a strange equilibrium
in the continuous movement: arrivals
displacing departures. Like the slow
migration of workers across the country,
but in that case the equilibrium is stranger,
not like equilibrium at all. They say
that you will get your bearings, but that
part still doesn’t make sense.
The […]
