Tuesday poem #697 : Janice Colman : this morning while I was hammocking

 

 

on my grandmother’s sofa while foraging for words rare     
as a Ghost orchid     I thought wait:  let words
find each other   alert as a Rottweiler
at watch on the front balcony   and, the first word is¾      

it could be a phrase
       caught
and the second [word]         oh, a game show!
        come
third word
        heart   
like what?          

then what?
        we used to watch TV in the basement
        it had a linoleum floor
and?
        humming
was it the white-throated?
        sparrow. yes, the same.
and did it sing its full song including?
         the final four notes? yes, yes, and held 

it held onto the last, didn’t it?
         how I flew into, between 
         and around, it was as if
         my heart flew, filled 
         the space inside, if you could see, 
         the notes, quarter some
         waiting, eighth notes too 

this is not working, all posing
and answering, all this posturing   forget: 
the walnut, the sparrow, smooth
basement floor, I’ll sit and scowl, I’ll sink  

into this old couch, my hands with joints wide-
around-the-waist      in the back-
ground    a TV like an ocean wash swells 

sharp-edged the operculum seals    
            its mollusc’s tender nacre      
            once I heard my mother sigh    

& pressed my child-ear to
their bedroom door
            again & again nightly 

I thought if I held
my breath    but her sigh had
found its wings            So: what is a sigh to do? 

What you’re saying is?

A sigh is a fledgling. Did you know I once had a yellow budgie?
            One day I left the cage door open     we were summering
            in the Laurentians and the living room window was half 

open, the neighbours searched & whistled      after all,
the budgie was cadmium yellow     but there’s something alluring
about the Laurentians in the summer, its mirrored lake 

& forest filled with blueberries   
you could live for days

 

 

 

 

Janice Colman is a Toronto-based neurodivergent poet and interdisciplinary writer. Her chapbook playing cello for a dead bird was published by Turret House Press (2025). Janice’s writing has appeared in filling Station, The New Quarterly, FreeFall, Arc Poetry Magazine, The /tƐmz/ Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. She has received fellowships from AIM Higher and Brooklyn Poets, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2022, 2025) and Best of the Net (2022).

Janice is the mother of two powerful daughters and a service-dog-in-training named Emily.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan