Orillia, Ontario

March

I.

Books pile by our bed
like bricks, each difficult to break. I chisel

until they crumble and cup
the red dust in my hand. At night

we breathe
it in and the tiny diamonds

make our dreams. But I am tired
of sleep, the ice

gate, the dammed
streams, these brittle days piled

like a pyre, waiting to ignite. Outside
people stroll the sidewalks

like zombies, each pointed
in one of two directions. Their eyes

are grey like the landscape.
Their eyes are grey like the skin

of the sky, wrapped around
the mourning

dove sitting frozen on the line.

II.

There are no newspapers
beside my bed. I hate

how they rumple, crumpling
in the corners like discarded, dirty

sheets. Anyway, the news
is all the same. We touch

each other under one word
floating in the still, shocked sky:

War. War. War. War. War.

For five years it swells like a welt
on the world, spelled out

in indigo, in the pointillism
of print. The only ink missing

is blood, other than our own.

Lauren Carter’s first manuscript of poetry, Lichen Bright, calls on imagery from the landscape of her youth, the north shore of Lake Huron, as well as time spent in Southern Ontario and British Columbia. Lichen Bright can be ordered through her publisher at www.yourscrivenerpress.com March is from her latest work.