folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets
Reworking My Will
I’ve been trying to think
about death
as I should, with friend
after friend
departing, and my own
body unveiling
its still-small
betrayals. But
today sun sparks from
crystals
of new snow and the
cardinal’s
altered song proclaims
that spring will come
again.
And though my husband
lives in constant pain
his eyes greet me with
their old blue warmth
and we talk and joke
together
in the afternoon’s
lengthening light.
A tiny fieldmouse, dark
against the snow,
motors like a wind-up toy
to seeds
below the feeder, leaving
a trail like a fine-
stemmed plant with buds
on either side.
—First published in The New Quarterly, Summer 2024
Melt Song
–after Tim Lilburn
Winter slumps
pocked grey whale
beached in X-ray light.
Steam spirals from dark
slopes
earth a stirring animal.
The river fills freed lungs
lunges, lashes.
Branches bead with twitterings –
all hunger and worn wings.
Dying winter flails
one last razor-gale, snare of bulking white.
Suppling trees shrug off
the leavings.
Swelling sun’s advance
widens windows
empties houses
roads like bones laid bare.
Winter a ghost on the grass.
—First Published in Sawdust Anniversary Chapbook, 2018
Jean Van Loon is a writer from Ottawa, on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg people. Her poems stories and reviews have been published in magazines from coast to coast. Her second poetry book, Nuclear Family (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022) won the 2023 Ottawa Book Award.
At present she’s working on keeping working, one poem at a time.
