Book Spine Poems

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