LYNX, Number 29:1, February 2014

the bakeshop cafe
a cappella harmonies
waft from the kitchen
on cinnamon-scented air
a teardrop steeps in my tea


that biting winter
my sister carried me
over hungry snowbanks
that swallowed our footsteps
before the bus opened its mouth


I wear
the wind's black breath
my raven disguise
wheeling over darkling mountains
haunted by moonbathing ghosts


I Am


I am
the black
and holy roundness
of stone
and water

I am
the loon
singing lamentations
to the four winds
and seven seas

I am
the bonedust
of winter
on the
bent jackpine

I am
the broken
guitar strings
a rusted vehicle
of song

I am
the bruised sky
of January
a poet ghost
in an empty chair

LYNX, Number 28:3, October 2013

Arctic Aria

on the tundra

a caribou river
surging past
my inukshuk arms
carrying the midnight sun

beluga ghosts
undulate beside our boat
sea canaries
and whalebone harps
singing the horizon

seeing
with my snow eyes
opening into
negative spaces between
the ptarmigan and polar bear

blue glacier
calving into the narrows
a bloodless birth
our letting go of progeny
that too soon drift away

aurora
lithesome spirit walker
shimmering
above the taiga
rainbow ribbons in her hair


~~


after the flood
a library of drowned books
bleeding poems
the wounded words dissolving
into the memory of water