Sunday, October 2, 2022

Kristjana Gunnars : Two poems

 


Alone with the airwaves

Yesterday was the anniversary of your death.
I did not mark the occasion in any special way;
I did not light candles or sit cross-legged on

the floor or any of those cheesy things.
I spent the day quietly, mindful of you.

I had fried won tons dipped in soy sauce,
found the chop sticks you never liked to use;

brought home two of the paintings I created
up in the hills where I lived with wild animals

and birds and conifers the last three years;
I washed the car, which you liked to do,

because it was dirty from when I lived
in that mucked-up carriage house for a while

after coming in from the frontier;
I watered the sagging plants and discovered

they should have been fed long ago,
they rose up so fast and said hello!

I told them I was sorry for neglecting them.
I’ve never talked to a plant before,

not the way you did.  You could bring even
the nearly dead ones to life again,

your special talent, maybe, after the way
you perfected the good times.  Times

were good with you.  I tried to remember that,
although I admit, there’s something hard

inside, like the stone in an avocado.  It just
stays there all the time, alone, dark, clenched.

 


  

Where they all went


I try to be awake

to the myriad of stars, the way
they slide soundlessly in and out of consciousness

as tangerine coloured leaves of trees
fall through the still air onto the ground.

Autumn again.  The morning sun burrows
into the forest behind my house, lights up

parts of tree trunks and half-naked branches.
An empty glass that held the Spanish red

from last night’s party, still stands on the counter.
The voices of those who were here echoed

through my dreams all night long, talking
about libraries and voting booths and starfish

that grab oysters in the shell whole
and smother them in their arms.

I try to be awake in this stillness
to the thousand injustices that fell on the world

while I slept.  I must have slept because
they happened elsewhere.  Everything happens

elsewhere, the way a running tide engulfs the shore
with or without us, the tide moves in like a bank

of cloud, and all the shells and pebbles
are left lying

in its wake.

 

 

 

 

Kristjana Gunnars is a B.C. based writer and painter.  Her latest books are The Scent of Light (Coach House) and Ruins of the Heart (Angelico).