Tag Archives: Attraction

ODE TO NERUDA

ODE TO NERUDA

You have gifted the world with your being
and your words the fruits of your being

You have seen the mother and the lover
in the sea tides rocking rhyme

In the flowers of her hair
in your politics of care

You remind us of the role of all poets
to open and meet the world naked

To perceive the world naked
to receive the world naked

To sing the world naked
naked as your hand

SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN

SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN

In a town of six or seven hundred
you get a cross section of the country

One classmate’s father’s suicide with shotgun
splattered walls

One boy my age, drowned
in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch

One with leukemia, white as the snow

One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and
mysterious as the language

One blonde, Shirley Long, to long for

She’s only interested in grade 9 boys

One bruised heart

Not yet hard enough to be broken