from Report from the Pirie Society, Vol. 1 No. 1
Applesauce
Your prayer came to me as a gift
of white blossoms
and applesauce in spring
your love and desire
your pain and understanding
a vision of knowing despair
folded into my lap
as a small inhale of coal dark words;
a poem endlessly overthrown
in which you and I are brought to nothing,
like seedlings left too long on the windowsill
while the shadow of the winter sun
dies slowly in the west.
The Horizon
While I was still alive,
to become a poem
meant to stand apart –
to become a vision of a vision –
an instrument of storm and suffering
when the sun hovered
two fingers above the horizon.
We did this willingly,
writing poetry like Manitoba maples,
the completeness of our love
resonant and fresh,
for seasons out of time
and time out of mind,
knowing the words
would eventually develop
like a fine-flowering rose bush
carefully covered in winter.
Mustard Jar
I wish I could have been there
when the lid on the mustard jar
finally swallowed
your splendid and glorious tongue.
The smell of ozone and fear
was made reverent by its lingering –
and your emerald eyes
lit small flares that began to flower,
covering the ground
with beetles and chicory stems
like blood and panic in the afternoon,
like vertigo.
Crucifixions
Love is not a reward, you said
it is a spiritual thirst
a longing and a compassion
for all that is made
when Spring bursts forth like a bead of sap,
Nature at some tipping point
we can never see.
The eternal providence
of long winter nights,
frost-wet earth
and pine needles burned to rust in the snow –
the contemplative life up against
champagne, dancing, potatoes boiled in their skins
and ecosystem collapse,
arriving just as the geese begin migrating north again
to the Maple trees, insomnia
and small Crucifixions
that flower each spring,
once the rotted manure
has been forked into the soil.
Forgetting
I sometimes forget
to paddle the canoe around
those poor, unworldly creatures
sinning and sunning there on the peninsula.
I sometimes forget
the universal truth that although we are all one,
I should keep practicing my French,
just in case.
I sometimes forget
the extent to which all in the world is not good,
but that – whether I like it or not –
some days, I am the gun.
I sometimes forget
that I could have been there with the Magdalene
stoic, spiky and unsubmissive,
with very harsh words for His childhood.
I sometimes forget
the power of incanted song,
hymns to death and delirium
sung out while rejoicing in heated pools, caffeine,
and cold bottles of craft beer.
I sometimes forget
that I am a deus ex machina,
filled with silence and patience
and the capacity to transcend biologies
when sown indoors during spring.
A Hazelnut
“I will make all things well” was the pledge,
name-dropped as a couplet and a coup
to the glory of the sky.
The promise made was a small thing,
the size of a hazelnut
bright as a mote
and in need of the shade of a book.
These are the seed moments
of our security and comfort,
truly taught and listened for
like chrysanthemums
and blood pumps in the ICU,
where we heal and we breathe
and stand against the tribulations to come,
translucent as glass
hard as Spruce bark
seedlings, unseen,
still covered in an inch of soil.
Sources:
Pearl Pirie. footlights (Radiant Press, 2020).
Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love (short text) (Penguin Classics, 1994 / Trans. Elizabeth Spearing).
Grant Wilkins is an occasional poet, printer and papermaker from Ottawa who has made a
practice of doing strange things to other people’s words. He has degrees in
History & Classical Civilization and in English, and he likes ink, metal,
paper, letters, sounds and words, and combinations thereof.
