The Hawk Portico 4:08pm
How many dead souls
can be attached to one
Butterfly?
No one near to Me has died
recently
yet there before My Stoop
flitted One for the taking
like The Birds
Who go unadorned
with such heraldry
Yarmouth, NS 8:30pm
I saw that institutional building
in the sunset haze
over Yarmouth Harbour
perhaps for the last time
— Oh how I can taste being entrenched there
“Patient X”
a basket case
“with delusional aspects”
Who wouldn’t eat
for years it seemed
yet turning out of Yarmouth
a pink ray fell upon My Page
The Hawk Queen Bed 7:35am
I Hear The Surf Surge Through
My Open Black Window
& One Solitary Fog Horn Echoing
As If It Were Six
The Hawk Queen Bed 6:30pm
I Am A Baby
In A Bassinet On A Beach
How Many Of Us Have Been Born On The Surging Crest?
How Many Of Us Will Die Upon The Ebb?
I Am Rocked To Sleep
By The Rhythm
I Am Awakened
To My Infancy
The Hawk Portico 3:00pm
The Signalling Call Of The Gull
Is To Alert Others
But That I Too Hear It
Must Mean, Momentarily,
That I Am In An Exchange
Of
Ear
And
Voice
The Hawk Deck 12:30pm
I am out of the literal
& metaphoric bed
of My First 52 Years
I have been shedding My 145 pounds
& am down to a proper 136
with two cups of tea
& half a banana left by Eliza
I have suffered a 24-hour fatigue
& wondered if I was not eating enough —
So What Will Become of My
Shredded Manuscript?
(need I remind You, My Audience,
that 2 copies may, with the Luck of God,
still exist)
& if They do not?
I must accept Their Loss
& shed Them as well
The Tomato-coloured Couch 1:52pm
I Am The Silver Bullet
Circling This Globe
Spermatozoan
In My Femininity
The Tomato-coloured Couch 8:00pm
All Other Losses
Seem To Culminate
In The Loss Of A Pet:
down to The Fish Plant I went
in the blowing fog
to look for Cami
& saw nary a cat
only a nice man
who wondered what I wanted
“I’m looking for a lost cat”
“Oh, I’ve had about five people so far
this summer —
one fella even had a picture — ”
believe it or not
a helium balloon
flew
overhead
Joanna Gilman Hyde 