No remedy

If this love for you was a bruise, aching
there would be such relief
cool, sweet relief
seeing it fade.
A slap,

a tap,
a pinch that would hurt just so,
bleed dark blossoms under smooth skin

raised rough, a tender spot
probed with a finger for a little
ouch
reminder,
fading to the yellow
and green of crushed fruit
under a tropical heel, a Jamaican heel
square, confident and matronly
working its way purely
from memory
down the old stone sidewalk.

If this love for you was a bruise, tomorrow
or the next day, maybe
it would be gone.

Rachel Westfall
July 19, 2009

Doomed dog days

Check it out... We're doing what we can to save Trevor the dog, who's been convicted and sentenced to death without a trial. The poor fellow has only just recovered from his past life of severe neglect, during which his collar became embedded in his neck. And now this.

brown-eyed, fur-brained dog
life has got away on you
dancing short-lived joy

A sympathy tale

Hey girl, my pen’s run dry;
my ears are full. You’ve told your story,
cried your salt-sweet rain,
walked the whole great shoreline
seven times, looking for a door
out of today. Or yesterday, the days
that won’t recede, the taint, the smell
of must upon your clothes. You’re marked
as with the scent of feral cats;
the smile across your mouth
has no one fooled. Hey girl,
my pen ran dry, your story’s told.
There’s nothing more to do
but hang it high, hang it to dry
across the power lines, forgotten
like another sorry joke; a sweatshirt,
abandoned, holds no one’s soul.

Rachel Westfall
July 15, 2009

writing in the dark

sleep steals words
sound steals sleep
blanked-out windows
artifice cover
for a forest of dreams
dark, rank moss
cut through by sirens
emergency lights
drunk voices
loading cars
loaded engines
pealing backwards
sneaking home
through not-dark
as the sun goes round
and round and round
in tireless circles

Rachel Westfall
July 12, 2009

EBay Remorse

I didn’t mean to steal your treasure.
It was just a friendly bid-war,
but I couldn’t help thinking of you
at the other end, and what you would bake
in that lovely cake pan
if it was truly yours. Maybe,
just maybe, your mother had one like it,
the secret to her day-and-night
birthday cake surprises,
and you’ve always
wanted one just the same.

Or maybe, just maybe
this pan was your grandmother’s,
sold by a fickle cousin
in a heartless online estate sale,
while your heart

stood

still

in Granny’s summer kitchen watching
delicious lemon-sugared steam
rise from a perfectly curved, oven-hot
treat.

Yet here I am, waiting
for my seven and a half pound
cast-iron treasure
to come in the mail, while you
have to start

all

over.

Rachel Westfall
July 8, 2009

Cyber-inspiration

I couldn't get online yesterday. What a relief to find a working internet connection this morning! It's frightening, actually, just how dependent I've become on this online life-line.

Cyber-inspiration

How I missed you
your words, the breath
of entanglement

such a spark, painting
these walls in peacock blue
shimmering with golden fish

a gut-deep swirl of fish
flashing down the hall
brought to life by
their own
imaginary
current

Unlikely fowl

Flagrant blue display

jeweled golden bridal train

longing for worship

This is one of the riverbank peacocks in Souris, MB. He saw me with my camera, so he came over and struck a series of lovely poses. When I walked away to try and find some other things to take pictures of, he followed me for a while.

Marauding gophers

It's so good to be home: back with the ravenous mosquitoes, my overgrown garden, tufts of grass that are going to seed, and the first of the summer's soapberries.

The weekend before we left Brandon, someone poisoned some gophers in a nearby park. Their corpses littered the area around a public swimming pool. Coincidentally, the same day, a vigilante gopher-battler published a letter in the paper complaining about mobs of marauding gophers who are frightening seniors in the area (!) and generally presenting a hazard to humanity. This person was calling for a total elimination of the gopher population in the neighbourhood. (!!)

I sent a little letter in response to the gopher poisoning incident, and it was published in Monday's Brandon Sun. Here is my letter, below.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
My children and I are visiting here from the Yukon, and one thing we really like about Brandon is the variety of wildlife habitat and the diverse plants and animals we can see here. We were shocked and appalled to discover that someone appears to have poisoned gophers in the Keystone pool area. Whoever did this seems to have no concern for the well-being of children who play there, other animals who might consume the toxic gopher corpses, and the gophers themselves. Gophers too have their rightful place in nature.

Poisoning urban gophers is ineffective, as the population will happily rebound, and the poison could head on up the food chain, lowering the numbers of other animals who prey on the gophers. Gophers love to make their homes in cleared and disturbed areas. If you want to have fewer gophers, try changing the landscape so itʼs less inviting to them. In the meantime, letʼs not wage war on nature.

Mr. Gruff says, "Don't kill gophers!"

A vengeful sky

When you came round to seeing it my way, I thought surely I had won.
I carried out my plan, knowing you were covering my back.
Imagine my surprise when thunderheads rolled in, voicing their rage.

Blackbirds lick the sky with ruffled wings, as wind tears through the grass.
They know what is to come, and yet I've foolishly ignored the signs.
It's the price I pay for arrogance, thinking only I know the way.

* * *
These are my first attempts at the Korean poetry form called sijo. Is it any good? Probably not. I'm sure I don't fully understand the rules underlying the form, which involves 3 lines of verse, each split in two by a pause, and an average of 14-16 syllables per line. However, it's always fun to try out new forms, to experiment with them and see what treasures lie within.

Thank you, Joseph, for bringing my attention to the sijo. I lived in Korea for a while, and loved it. All things Korean make me feel a bit nostalgic.

Anyone else want to have a go at the Sijo? Please feel free to use the comments section here to post a link to your poem.

Falling

I never meant to fall in love;
I kept my heart apart, separate
as I looked to him patiently,
expectantly as any good student
looks upon a teacher.

But then he began to weave his sound,
reaching low, pulling notes
from the dark sacred soul of the earth
herself, pulling high, reaching notes
of the swallows, of the hawks
in their long slow circle
of the hot summer sky.

I never meant to fall in love;
but it came, pulled out
tendril by red-slick tendril,
with the force of the conjurer-surgeon
calling out a swollen appendix without
a single cut
and so I laid it
on the ground at his feet.

Rachel Westfall
June 25, 2009

And again, this was written in conversation with Christopher. It still needs a good title.