The Tomato-coloured Couch 6:22pm
My House is Asylum
My Hands offer Asylum
when placed upon
any body in pain
in fear
In My House, with My Hands
I can cast out
suffering
I can deliver
My Power
into The Hands
of Another
I have The Power
to Heal
I can Heal
My Friends
I can Heal My
Husbands
My Lovers
through
My Dead Brother
& The Deaths of
My Parents
I am Emboldened
I can Heal
This World
through My Art
& My Mind
I can Instruct
Nourish
Tone Down
Play Up
Send Every Body
Home
The Hawk Portico 5:15pm
I absorb surf
sounding off
from The Cape
I catch
swells of waves
rushing inshore
filtering through
scrub spruce
across open yards
streaming into My Limbs
to meet My Body’s Core
The Hawk Deck 11:36am
I am drinking in
The Autumn
when I drink My Tea
I am taking in
the lower sun
the preparations
of neighbours’ lawns
the last mowings
the wood split
for winter
The Hawk Outpost 9:17am
Silver Light envelopes Me
as I stand before
My Hawk Outpost —
I see The Beads Of Light
on The Laundry Line
& feel the warmth of Sun
shimmering
through My cobwebbed
window
The Hawk Outpost 10:22am
I am so happy here
sending My Doctor
off to work
in His light-blue
wrinkle-free
shirt
hanging Our Comforter
on the line
while a neighbour’s
in Her Bathrobe
& I am in My Pyjamas
The Hawk Outpost 8:46am
I see The Sun, Silver
on My Ocean
with electric lines
down by the shore
looking like spider threads
laden with morning dew
Tusket, NS 1:35pm
Women have been housed
in harems
insane asylums
in societies
They have been burned
drowned, beheaded
allowed to be disowned
by Their own families
& stoned
to death
The Hawk Outpost 7:58am
I see The Sun
breathing in and out
behind the fog
obscuring the ocean
dampening the foliage
planting its dew
upon My Grass
The Hawk Portico 7:40pm
Down by The Guzzle tonight
I saw a young gull
with His breathy Beep – Beep —
He was with a parent gull
presumably
Who flew a few yards off
perhaps because of My proximity —
and Young Gull flew too
and circled overhead, beeping
to land
straight down
beside His Bond
Barrington Passage 1:16pm
I’ve walked across
My First Fall Leaves
upside down, the leaves
not Me
Oh — not Me — I have
all the tools at My Reach
for The Greatest, Grandest
entry of All —
I have The Seasons
set before Me:
beginning with Autumn
when I laid out My Canvas
on Michael Jackson’s birthday
when I signed My Name on October 10th
when I moved to Nova Scotia
and had My 2.4 Children —
Oh I was happy
until My Mother Died
but then, even then
I had the shock of newness
in The Shower Of Lights
to ponder, to confound everyone
around Me
to culminate in October
the month of My Baby Girl
to release My Self
inside the reassuring caress
of The Littlest Man
to Whom I have linked My Self
in My Mind
for every last season of Fall
Joanna Gilman Hyde 