Tuesday poem #549 : Ian LeTourneau : Reversing Falls/Rapids

 

 

 

The exit polls were unreliable:
falling leaves revolve on the wind’s
luggage carousel. For Sassoon, war
became a series of holes and ditches.
Here at slack tide, a gorge formed by two
collided continents, water is settled,
and unsettled. The Saint John — full
of bereavement, a blindfold sweeping
across the valley, a freepouring
of millennia, its Styrofoam vernacular,
cut short by the Atlantic — a thalassic
blockade, tilting, sloshing, backward
compatible. Whirlpools gurgle
aimlessly, and spin fairy tales to gulls.

 

 

 

Ian LeTourneau lives in Fredericton, NB (unsurrendered and unceded traditional Wolastoqey land).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan