I place my sister
in this place and wait.
Sun, glittered pools, rock.
A depression the shape of my family.
She does not move and I tip
the gentle circumstances
that keep her silent
and she begins to lope
over the peat. The hummocked
bunch grasses and prehistoric ferns,
the tiny purple orchids
and punk rock bog grass tufts.
I want to see if she can tell me
the names of these birds
or the tiny frogs
of the dark water pools.
Something her children
have not taught her.
I close my eyes and listen.
It’s been years we have not spoken.
The wind stops and the desert
she carries inside unfurls and pours
over the top of her body
and meets this wet desert. Hello,
they say, as she continues
her jerky steps along the one boot
wide coffin road,
its cairns for resting the box, its
amethyst
shatter simmering quartz
leaping slowly at her ankles,
little points of hill that triangle
down to the sea in various states
as the weather moves over and over.
I watch as she pirouettes
off a golden bog moss puff,
as she flings children like little
apples
all around her, lets them take root
and then rot in the invisible
waters.
I want to show her anything,
to land her back here
where we were from but still
I can’t make anyone do a thing.
Maleea Acker is the author of three books of poems: The Reflecting Pool and Air-Proof Green (Pedlar Press, 2009, 2012); Hesitating Once to Feel Glory (Nightwood 2022) which was a finalist for the Victoria Book Prize, and; Gardens Aflame: Garry Oak Meadows of BC’s South Coast (New Star, 2021). She is faculty in the English Department at Thompson Rivers University and an instructor at the University of Victoria. Maleea is currently Program Lead for the post-doctoral ECCC-funded project Engage with Nature-based Solutions (engagewithnbs.ca), which is producing science storytelling, educational curriculum and funding climate artists nationally to create a climate and NBS toolkit.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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