Tuesday poem #385 : Kim Fahner : Holidays are hard, but pandemics are harder

When time pours itself out into strange new shapes,

when you need to find light by looking through shadows,

when your snow tires will be on until July,

and when feral squirrels have taken over the street.

Eggs in a nest, tiny and translucent;

bird on a wire, head tucked under wing;

wild gate that bangs into itself, over

and over, just down the block in nightdark;

chalk drawing blown away by gusts,

pavement washed clean of fading marks.

There’s a stamp on a ghost letter

that was carried by a worn down raven,

from a place that might never have been,

from someone who’s been dead for years,

and the air shimmers in waves now,

and whales swim alongside mermaids

in those Venetian canals, not knowing

where they ought to go next.

Pandemics are harder, it seems,

and things that once seemed solid

are fleeting, and things that once

seemed real are not. Go ahead now.

Try and spin Fortune’s wheel.

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. She was poet laureate in Sudbury from 2016-18, and was the first woman appointed to the role. Kim's latest book of poems is These Wings (Pedlar Press, 2019). She's a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Writers' Union of Canada, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim blogs fairly regularly at kimfahner.wordpress.com and can be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan