Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We're Dead
by Catherine Graham
The moon arcs—in and out, playing form.
Stars wrap our fate while intruder dreams
signal: come back. They hold our stability with quickened steps.
Stand where grass weaves basket strands, make
the centre heave, the pinched earth speak,
before thoughts erase and we have no names.
Fixed on the busy you miss the owl-winter, the who-cold
crizzling lake. Raindrops inside snowdrops.
When our shoes sprout hello-flowers, cold lips pucker, speak—
What to do but follow this thread? Wind circular words
to chain our necks. A necklace without clasps
means another light’s not listening.
To think story is to construct from that other realm
where jade water cools fire’s friction. Pockets where pleasure finds memory.
Take this nosegay, touch intuition, before we float off the page.
Now go past sentence. Air-sheets shatter—absorbed
by grasses and creatures scurrying there.
Viral green points down, we watch the swarm.
Swan’s neck quickens to question—her wings,
snow-blinding flaps. Nest birds have it—twiggy cup to sink into
after cracking. The rub that brought forth twine and twig weaves the cradle.
Head naked like a freshly hatched bird, moist with dew from the wormfield.
What moves in tawny spurts, jolts. Silence rearranges. It does not mend.
Seed. But know bloom. Unravelling defies gravity. False to think otherwise.
Fools. We have a future to hatch. When roots shoot out—
the sun-calling art of escape: leaf, sepal, petal—the sun
plays hide-and-seek. Silence is a kind of flight.
Scratch light to a rain-flecked level. Twitch strategic to inhabit submission.
Repetition renews. Upland by the railroad tracks—eggs disguised as stones.
Slip past daylight to a time held by skein of old stars—
past evening, past waiting—
Enough! Never enough, until pulled to flight or sleep.
And a dog bounds helplessly wet for a tossed stick he cannot find.
Catherine Graham is the author of the award-winning novel Quarry and six acclaimed poetry collections including The Celery Forest, a CBC Best Book of the Year. She teaches creative writing at University of Toronto where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. Published internationally, she is a previous winner of TIFA’s Poetry NOW and leads their monthly Book Club. Æther: an out-of-body lyric and her second novel, The Most Cunning Heart, are forthcoming. www.catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet