Four new poems by our friend Lesley-Anne Evans.
CONTAINERS AS A TEMPORARY MEANS OF SELF PRESERVATION
The photograph is black and white, held
in place by paper corners; a time capsule.
We pose by the Rideau 500,
forever beginning our 13 hour drive.
My brothers and I—a three pack
of restless nesting dolls. I will be car sick.
I will drool into my pillow like a hooked fish.
When we get to the sea I will cut and run;
a cracked mason jar. I will ditch shoes and socks
and fly like the box kite we built; become a dot
in the wild sky, but not yet.
Traffic stops dead on the turnpike.
Pine plantations march down sandy shoulders; acrid heat;
vanilla with a whisper of kelp. I recall the perfect spacing
of those trees, their oily horizontal quiver
in the heat—mysterious, inviting.
My mother’s warning:
stay in the car; stay on the path.
THE ANGELS
After Edwin Muir’s The Horses
Barely a nine month after
The arrest of the thief that stole the world’s breath,
Late in the afternoon, the angels came.
By then we had deconstructed reverence.
But in the first few days it was so hard to believe in a cure
We glanced heavenward, and were afraid.
On the second day,
Netflix failed; we rebooted the system; no signal.
On the third day, an artist dragged his oversized canvases
Into the empty town square, and set them on fire.
On the fifth day, a Red Cross truck passed by us heading west,
Pine coffins lashed to the flat bed. On the sixth day,
A naked woman ran shrieking down the street,
And behind her a howling child. Thereafter,
Nothing. All screens blank.
And still they sit sightless in our living rooms,
And sit, perhaps turned on, in a billion home offices
All the world over. But now if they should turn on,
If an image should suddenly reappear,
If, at the close of day when all talk is exhausted,
We would not be entertained, or let them bring
The bad old world that drowned its children in the bucket
Of their lungs. We would not have it again.
Sometimes, we think of a forest of crosses on a Copacabana beach,
And the old ways we had of curing sorrow.
Then, the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
Holy books sit backwards on our shelves; in winter
They are trees we harvest to start our fires.
We leave them where they are, and let them serve;
“Ash becomes hummus in its time.”
We take in stray dogs who listen with their heads cocked,
Then lick our tears. We have gone back
Far past our mother’s land.
And then, that afternoon,
Early in the fall, the angels came.
We saw swift shadows moving up the road,
Tongues of fire in the late hour’s golden light,
Aquiver like aurora in a northern sky.
We saw the eyes
Turning like tidal bores, and we were afraid.
We had dismissed angelic hosts in our father’s time,
Weary from striving. Now they were strange to us,
Like a feathered topper on a vintage Christmas tree,
Or a carving on the altar of a village church.
We did not dare go near them.Yet they waited,
Stoic and keen, as if sent by some large corporation
To reconcile accounts and maintain customer relations.
In the first moment we had never a thought
That they were mysteries to be known and used.
Among them were a half-dozen Virtues
Dropped in like “perpetual light shine upon us” prayers.
Since then they have answered our queries, heard our complaints,
They stay on in corners, meditation huts, and bedside drawers.
Their willingness can sometimes pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed; their coming our beginning.
DEPARTURE LOUNGE
When I greet you at the door, you are already gone. You
hummock late under the duvet—dog watching—we know
your capacity to fledge.
They say I should be happy, free, empty nester, but I am not.
I fill my days with trivia, mend a tear, pull a few weeds,
pick grapes while the starlings complain.
They say this is my second coming, but it is not. I wear a mask
of meaning over my naked face. My womb,
my hips, my poems have misplaced their purpose.
When you come home, I wait like a stray
under the table for crumbs you toss my way.
You leave for a few hours to visit friends.
I fill my time with meditations— how long
your hair has grown, how far away you live, how strong
my body—a live birth each time you go.
A ROPE OF THREE STRANDS IS NOT EASILY BROKEN
Untethering will not be easy.
Goodness knows I barely understand
what it means.
First, I must admit
I am held, or holding.
Then, hard work;
unraveling each complicated knot,
fingers I must convince open,
the release of weight.
At times I fear I may be carried
on an untrustworthy wind.
When I stand and gaze
at a flock of starlings who bend the evening
into waves of delight, surely
my arms can learn contentment
in murmurations of two.
Or when spring comes,
or the next, or the next, when wildflowers
push from winter's dark tomb
like flamboyant little miracles, maybe then
my bones will remember
this solitary practice of being born
again, and again.
Lesley-Anne Evans belongs to a small woodland in Kelowna, B.C.. She is a poet, photographer, librettist, and arts facilitator, born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Her poetry is published in literary journals, and she won the 2019 BC Federation of Writer’s Literary Prize. Lesley-Anne’s explorations in nature, creative practice, and contemplative spirituality continue to save her life. https://laevans.ca/
