folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets
daffodils
flourish
here as if the sun shed yellow into daubs along the corner grass that touches
paved roads the bike path the tall
steel staircase to the o train as if these daffodils
override two centuries since wordsworth held them punctuated in his sestains
with iambic octameter that ends in pensive mood too inward for a text too
metaphoric for a meme no soundtrack simple daffodil
visuals irl air as if the sun freed from lonely cloud flashed upon my eye and
beamed lines of light to wander on the slope so my breath blooms my heart with
pleasure fills 
this if worth these words 
this
Then
It was then I started to walk and headed toward the field I’d once seen that wasn’t far, though it takes a long while to get there, with the hills halting me and the rocks jutting under my feet, until the terrain levelled and the ground smoothed, and I began to see the first patches of willowy grass undulating in the wind, high grass that soon surrounded me, and when I bent it aside it formed a brief trail I followed, farther along to where the light touched only the tall feathered tips, and as I went deeper into thick grass, the darkness became more complete, interrupted by shafts of silvery light that strengthened the rebounding darkness, a welcome reprieve as I let myself sink to the roots of the grass, on the soft dust of earth where light no longer needed to reach, the dark warmth of this place whole as my own body spine-stitched like a shell around me, my hands laced across my breast, and in the silence I grew attuned to a voice more insistent the more it emerged, a voice of breath that pulsed in my ears on a single pitch I continue to hear.
At the moment I’m finishing a new collection that explores history and memory. The poems, like ice-fishing holes, are openings into the past – not to return to it, but to work towards understanding and synthesis. As one poem says, “I bore a hole through / frozen centuries / to catch / what breathes below”. The poems are written in a range of styles, with images and ideas from multiple perspectives, over several poems or sections. Interesting and fun to write.
Adele Graf’s most recent work, buckled into the sky, in 2021 and her book math for couples in 2017 were both published by Guernica Editions. Both were shortlisted for the Archibald Lampman Award. Her chapbook a Baltic Friday early in grey was published by above/ground press in 2017. Her 2018 chapbook, Directions to Suffern NY circa 1950, published by Tree Press, won the Tree Reading Series chapbook prize. In 2025 a large Ottawa choir performed a series of her poems professionally set to music.
