There is your name
on the attendance list.
Absent: excused
Parents called in.
poem- gang aft a-gley December 17, 2020
Those best laid plans
family coming from afar
creating traditions, warm hearts,
remembering those lost this year.
Everything is ready here, gifts piled up
waiting for wrapping.
Public health says stay home.
We must be lonely holiday islands.
There’s no time for parcels to arrive by the
assigned festive day
amid the mail delivery crisis.
No one to gather around our table.
So everything will be different.
We must make something new, a Zoom festivity?
Re-thinking that nativity when a stable had to do,
just like for the Holy Family, things don’t always go
according to
our best laid plans.
Poem- choking December 1, 2020
Tonight amid the Christmas decorations
grief is hanging on our tree;
loss pummels
hopefulness.
Sadness hollows out my chest,
crushes my shoulders,
lodges in my throat.
Longing overwhelms.
There is no comfort
here, only more memories
of what is gone
who is gone
when is gone
where is gone.
Tonight is too much to bear,
so I’ll climb into bed and
trust tomorrow brings
solace and that much lauded
peace of the season.
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poem- before the diagnosis November 19, 2020
I already knew.
In the photos
her smile flounders
before it finds her eyes.
She is missing,
though her body
moves, leaves the kettle
to boil dry, starts something
for dinner, while the last
idea burns.
poem- microcosm November 11, 2020
The newscast announces an IED*
blew up another patrol.
Dread descends.
My heart pounds.
I strain to hear the names.
Let him be safe.
Let him be safe.
One hundred fifty-eight other names were called.
A thousand prayers unheard.
A thousand exploded hearts.
He carries them all in his duffel
when he returns.
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#LestWeForget
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IED= improvised explosive device.
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A favourite student of mine fought in Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces. As I listened at the radio during the time he was gone, I was conscious of what an entire generation of families must have felt as they listened to hear about all the boys and men of their communities fighting abroad. The magnification of the stress was easy to imagine. ‘My’ soldier returned safely to Canada and returned to the high school to speak in a Rembrance Day service a year or two later. I bawled my eyes out through the whole thing so thankful he was alive and whole. I’m thinking of him today, and all those families whose hearts were broken, not so long ago.
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poem- leaving the keys for the new owners October 15, 2020
The house echoes.
Drapes she made hang on the windows,
the last pieces of her here,
except
the lingering scent of bread baked
months ago, as
her last messages of appreciation,
her last independent acts.
poem-Emptying my mother’s house September 7, 2020
I tell myself,
In the process of creation,
her art fulfilled its purpose.
If the family has chosen what to keep
Freeing the rest to the universe
is just extending its mandate
not a betrayal to her
memory.
poem-siren call September 3, 2020
It used to be
a howling ambulance
made me hold my breath
waiting to hear if it flew to you.
Now you’re past their aid,
so I send a blessing
to the stranger in need
and into the sky in memory
of you
poem- Father’s Day June 21, 2020
My father’s ashes are beside me. Once
Every day was Father’s Day,
Now every day he’s absent,
But every day he’s here.
Love never dies.
Devotion binds fond memories;
so long as we remember him,
it’s always Father’s Day.
poem-grey June 8, 2020
The first day
my mother did not see
dawned grey and heavy
with dew.
But still the finch greeted me
with its joy at waking to
the new.
Shawn L. Bird 