May you always have art to charm/ your days, a sensible hearth/ and friends dependable as gravity.
–from “Toast” by Jim Bertolino
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These poems are from Private Eye.
Wendy’s books can be ordered directly from her, because she gets a deal from her publisher and is glad to sell them for $15 Canadian including shipping. Wendy’s email address is [email protected]. Her mailing address is PO Box 496, Sooke, B.C. V0S 1N0.
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Wendy Morton is the host for the Mocambopo reading series in Victoria, B.C.
Wendy MortonMy Friends Die
for Shirley Atkinson
My friends die.
I see them in the thin blue light
of hospital rooms,
where they lie,
newly scarred,
their lambent dreams,
beyond reach.
Entubed,
fluids move
through them,
from them.
Later, they become
brave, hairless,
radiant.
I discover their photographs
in drawers,
smiling, distracted by life,
or caught in conversation,
in blurry pixilation
as they move
toward the last blue light.
Death’s Necklace
for Rooth Cross
My friend wears death’s necklace,
she says she thinks of white butterflies
flying in her blood.
she is hopeful:
she will plant a garden,
plan a picnic,
dance.
One breast is gone,
now half a colon,
the lymph nodes next.
There should be cermonies
for her parts:
ritual burials;
celebrations with
incantations and incense.
Instead,
there are the blurred words
of oncologists,
the lies of friends,
death’s transparent, burning wings.
Falling Water Birds
The red winged blackbirds
arrive each year
in the trees behind the house.
I call them
the falling water birds.
There is a stillness my mind remembers.
Not the sound of birds.
Waterfalls. Cascades of light.
What are the sounds
the mind makes? Falling water. Blackbirds.
