what if I started looking for a way in?
Doesn’t take much to reclaim a corner
from Slurpee cups and cigarette butts.
A shortcut transformed into a mini-park
with a bench, a few flowering shrubs,
a scraggly garden of cast-off
hostas, divided irises,
remnants welcome,
even the parts of myself
I cover up or reject.
Quick to anger, despair.
A friend’s letter reminds,
It is your darkness that gives
you your shine.
Ten years on Vancouver Island.
I couldn’t bear one more Garry oak cut
down for a Costco, one more mountainside
bulldozed into naked cul-de-sacs.
I returned to a city already ruined
and found people building
raised beds on boulevards,
growing roots, pushing back.
Penned on scrap cardboard:
Please don’t steal the plants.
Dawn’s metallic drum roll recalls
that single bed we once shared.
Blinds left open to watch the sky
turn scarlet, colour of closed eyes.
Waking to the roller-coaster flight
of woodpeckers. First kisses.
A pair of red-shafted flickers
lapping ants with sticky tongues.
Four, five hours rest, before my love rose
to sketch songs on the loaned Wurlitzer.
Now, we’re often too tired,
blackout curtains block street lights
but not sirens and foghorns.
When I lay my head on his chest,
prelude to sheet-stealing and sleep
positions a to z in our double bed,
it’s those woodpeckers I hear
inside his ribs, drumming.
Metal handle even with his shoulders, the boy
heaves forward. The goliath rears up
and chomps down,
ragged whitecaps of shorn and long grass
in its wake. The boy’s father shouts
instructions over the din. I wish I had
someone to tell me never mow
barefoot. Eat your vegetables.
Take the long view in marriage,
this argument won’t matter in ten years.
Watching the hand-off from father to son—
what will I pass on? Childless
by choice, who will I watch
from the window?
As his mother worries the glass
with a cloth, as the boy pushes
a swath into the future, bright yellow
dandelions flare
under the whirling blade.
Judged on curb appeal, which exterior fits
ours? On after-dinner walks pretend
we own: pick your favourite house on this block,
the white-shuttered cottage or shoe-worn
Edwardian porch. Through architectural tropes
we test differences. But what of the interiors,
the back lanes where the real living happens?
Our routines don’t align without effort.
I crave quiet into afternoons; my love plays
double bass in our one-bedroom. All
the negotiations over headphones, time alone.
He loves the cottage, its small footprint,
says we don’t need much. True.
I still covet a fireplace, a hammock,
doors we can close. Night after night
these questions act as cardinal points
at the crossroads.
Local mascots, the wooden mannequins
in front of Laughing Bean Coffee
change their positions daily:
foxtrot, karate chop, strut Canucks
jerseys on game nights, high-five
commuters who slow to read placards:
his Freshly Baked and hers
I love his hot muffins.
Milk steaming at espresso machines,
the barista asks the next in line,
What’ll it be today, Henry?
A simple question triggers
envy. To be known, a regular
drinking chai and playing Scrabble
with my love, to let down
my guard long enough
to be seen, called out
of anonymity.
Night of nesting dolls,
many layers held
inside this one:
cocktails on the balcony,
supper at eight, the after-
dinner doubles games,
while kids pump legs
on swing sets.
At sundown, an old man
shuffles three times
around the park. Nightly,
I’ve started to look for
his cross-country gait,
tan paperboy cap,
started to call him ours.
Then falls the deep blue
scrim and the few
stars we can spot
amid