Four poems for Kathleen Fraser

(1935-2019)

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.