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Happy
2011!
Marianne and Suzanne and Ursula send you wishes
for a fantastic year to come. Here's the first poem of the year
— thanks to the poets who sent in their couplets. Mouse-over
each stanza to reveal each poet's name. All couplets © their
authors.
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The Change in Winter Light
Within a poem started,
I disappear from the world;
with every poem written, I return once more.
This moonscape field
I tread across, an astronaut.
First footprint, tabula rasa, tentative. trepidation.
Walking through
snow, I realize I am missing
my garden - this feeling of earth between my hands.
How can a poem capture
petals' curve through time and space
not to mention six pale stamens' fragile bullying?
On the verge of dawn
the torn heart is the flower god kisses.
***
Who was it first noticed,
the change in winter light
pointed out the angle, the promise, longer days?
Solstice sweet
with moonlight eclipse, makes me ponder
Will the new year bring promise and hope and bliss or conflict amiss?
What's the source
of stillness? Despite weather warnings,
Peace, within or beyond us, around each perfect, silver curve.
Each year a "Christmas
goodies" box arrives from Israel
from a stranger whose husband's life I helped save.
My grandson at two:
O tree! O lights! O apple! O star! O bird!
O Santa! O snow! O kitty! Oh, child! To have such joy again.
Make up the winter bed
with layered memories
to soften the blow of glacial disenchantment.
Poverty does not pay
attention to detail.
Life's detritus spreads around the waste surrounding it.
Drift snow, snow
drift, grey sea shot-silks
over tide of elections' broken promises.
The nave of the fat
Yule bird plundered, my daughter's seat vacant
she, under the peak of a new African school, eats cassava.
Contributors:
Anne Swannell, Victoria, BC
David Fraser, Nanoose Bay, BC
Dorothee Lang, Germany
gillian harding-russell, Regina, SK
Grace Cockburn, Saanichton
Heather Cardin, near Richard, SK
Heidi Greco, Surrey, BC
Kim Clark, Nanaimo, BC
Leanne McIntosh, Nanaimo, BC
Margaret Behr, Powell River, BC
Naomi Beth Wakan, Gabriola, BC
Patricia Anne McGoldrick, Kitchener, ON
Sidney Bending, Victoria, BC
Susan Braley, Victoria, BC
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