Tuesday poem #481 : Ellie Sawatzky : CHIHULY’S MILLE FIORI

 

 

 

In the dark gallery we look at the glass.
Grasses, snakes. Bulrushes and flushes of colour.
My sister and I—we’re charcoal-supple, still calm;
it’s a full moon tonight, and later we’ll go dancing.

Grasses and snakes. Bulrushes, flushes of colour,
while Dad’s on a stretcher waiting for a brain scan.
It’s a full moon tonight, and later we’ll go dancing.
We look at the glass. One thousand flowers.

And Dad’s on a stretcher waiting for a brain scan.
Somewhere else, a different city. Everything feels right.
We look at the glass. One thousand flowers
reflected in a black pool, drowsy.

Somewhere else, a different city. Nothing feels right.
In the hospital it’s never dark. Fluorescent moons
reflect in the black windows, manless.
And we don’t know yet what’s happened.

In the hospital it’s never dark. Fluorescent moons
in the windows, flashes of white like fractured bone.
We don’t know yet what’s happened.
Innocent minutes drift between the glass cattails.

The windows, flashes of white like fractured bone.
My sister and I—we’re charcoal-supple, so calm.
Innocent minutes drift between the stalks of cattails.
We sit in the dark garden. Look at the beautiful glass.

 

 

 

 

Ellie Sawatzky (@elliesawatzky) grew up in Kenora, Ontario. A past winner of CV2’s Foster Poetry Prize, runner up for the Thomas Morton Memorial Prize, and a finalist for the 2019 Bronwen Wallace Award, her work has been published widely in literary magazines across North America. None of This Belongs to Me is her debut full-length poetry collection, published by Nightwood Editions in October 2021. She is currently an editor for FriesenPress, a member of the Growing Room Collective, and curator of the Instagram account IMPROMPTU (@impromptuprompts), a hub for prompts and literary inspiration. She lives in Vancouver with her partner and a cat named Camus.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan