The Regina Public Library
is sponsoring a book spine poetry photo challenge.
What a terrific idea!
I looked around my office this morning, came up with
six piles of books, six photos, six poems.
So much fun, I had to force myself to stop.
No apologies for
the weather
beneath that starry
place
closer to the sun.
Who has seen the
wind
where the wild
things are
inventing the hawk.
Your last day on
earth
everything arrives
at the light:
the touchstone,
birthday letters,
clay birds
beyond my keeping.
Yes.
The small words in
my body
could be the gates
of the sun,
proof of a tongue,
earth after rain,
you.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
October.
The day is a cold grey stone
under her skin.
That night we were ravenous
in the vision of birds
in a city you will never visit.
Two citizens
accordion breathing and dancing,
becoming light.
Coming home from home
west by northwest.
Waking in Eden.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
Listen, Honey,
tell me everything:
a few
words for January,
what
is already known,
country roads, great Canadian murder
and
mystery stories,
orchestra of the lost steps,
the
house of the easily amused.
How did you get this number
in a sunburned country?
Riding planet Earth?
Talking down the northern lights?
Listen, Honey,
you haven’t changed a bit.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
Confidence:
a dangerous friend,
the angel on the roof.
What was mine:
the sweet edge,
a new path to the waterfall.
The other sea. Lost gospels—
various miracles—
The bare plum of winter rain.
The laws of ice—
hard light
vanishing.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
Let me be the one
clinging to the myth
in the misleading absence of light.
The roaring girl
getting to know you
where the rain ends.
What can’t be changed shouldn’t be mourned:
blood of angels,
the dogs of babel,
19 knives,
a haunting sun.
Listen, Honey,
let’s not let a little thing
like the end of the world
come between us.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
Origami dove
through black spruce
the colour of bones,
a grain of rice.
The blue field.
Restless white fields.
The height in between
yellowgrass, red clay
legacy.
Atonement.
The old familiar
fascination.
The day is a cold grey stone,
the yellow heart
cool.
Black zodiac.
What is this thing called love?
-Shelley A. Leedahl
