The Tomato-coloured Couch 5:06pm
I’m Married To This House
& The Doctor & The Books
That Come With It
Even If My Son Peak
Settles Out West
We Can’t Move —
Where Would My Crow Painting
Go?
The Tomato-coloured Couch 6:55pm
I live a privileged life
with a daughter in The Caribbean
& a son out West —
My Family is taken care of
& I am secure in My Wind-proof House
with seven well-fed cats
& a candle on The Living Room Table
The Hawk West Desk Window 11:45am
My Children live
in temporary housing:
Peak’s is an 8′ x 12′ cubicle
in a modular unit
furnished by Cenovus
in Alberta —
Eliza’s is a room in the basement
of a house owned by a single mother
5 minutes away from Acadia University
These are the rooms
meant for not much more than laying down One’s Head —
the private enclaves of worker and student —
These are the habitats of youth
on the move
on Their Way to achieving
some semblance of
permanance
The Hawk Dining Room 9:26pm
The Sky Is Leaded Silver
The Ocean Molten
After The First Snowfall
Of Any Import
My Car Is Facing East
To Melt The Remainder
Of What I’ve Brushed
Ready To Go Mail
My Son’s Birthday Card
November 6, The Hawk West Desk Window 9:35pm
I saw The Pain
of His Parents’ Separation
flash across His Teenage Face:
six years later
when to My Son I felt I could confess
a poisonous love I husbanded
too long
am husbanding still — now My Daughter
runs Her Mother’s Risk
of another broken home
the one Eliza’s been homesick for
all Her Life
October 7, 2012, The Hawk West Desk Window 10:22pm
Both My Children were born
weekend babies —
Peter, deprived of oxygen
at supper time on a Sunday
two days after Christmas
Eliza into a pool of regulated water
at 9:04 on a Saturday Night
smack in the middle of October
–
Both are grown now
Their official Childhoods over
yet They play — and work:
Peak in His Darkroom Camper
Gub at University, running
Both take Their Play — and work — very seriously
It is Their hard-won achievement
and You can imagine how proud of Them I am
The Tomato-coloured Couch 4:45pm
I have delivered A Prayer
— The First I’ve Ever Written —
through The Sacred Postal Service
but I don’t know how
My Children’s Grandfather
will receive It
The Hawk West Desk Window 2:22pm
My Children are inching Their Way
farther & farther away from Me —
Peak is bound for British Columbia
Eliza has begun Her First Year Of College
but rather than succumb to The Empty Nest
I must grow with Them & be The Best
Care-taker of My Self —
be My Own Mother
The Hawk Portico 5:46pm
I hear The Chickadee
& an outboard motor
& think of My Mother
My Mother traversing the waves
to get out to Mc Nutt Island
A Place I swore never
to forget
yet It has caused Me pain
& grief when She died
but I own Her house no longer
merely some land
which My Children
are destined
to inherit
Joanna Gilman Hyde 