Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Four poems for Kathleen Fraser




1.

If I were to pin my favourite quotes,
this wall might collapse.

Stitched from fragments, and held,
for an instant.

Everything destroyed, Spicer wrote,
must be tossed.

There is always a truth, you wrote,
to such restlessness.


2.

The elegy speaks to an absence
both unexpected

and abrupt. Applies
lyric pressure. She speaks to me

in sentences. Solitude

as capital. Echo, across
these crystalline structures. Poem

as carved diamond, or
a certain uneven panic.


3.

The heart, in whatever language, wants, or
does not care. Incorporate this into what

we have already learned. The water heater
sound like a bird. The furnace

sound like a bird. Everything
sounds like a bird.


4.

The pleasures conflict
from this writing. Loss

is a loss.



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