ISABEL CHENOT has loved, memorised, and practised poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood Books

Great Lake 

As though we’d slipped through to a hidden room, 

we walked without our usual thoughts. 

Our fear was dying. 

---

A tree swept upward, an abandoned broom  

raking the quiet. Intermittently, it rained white 

birds – of whom, not one was crying.  

---

Dead fear can be exhumed,  

but what can rob us of that 

blue bar lying  

---

on its steel grey tomb – 

or of the slippered light 

on the sole sound of water flying? 

dawn, Manitowoc 

Lake birds are rowing out and turning 

  their long canoe of flight, 

perfecting air’s geometry of yearning 

  with curves of white. 

---

Hover and dip and swivel, gullwing, 

    ternwing; 

  pelican, drip light. 

Skim, heron. Oars of morning 

  on lakes of sight. 

The weeds were wrapped around my head 

  -Jonah 2:5 

The light exists along the edges 

of the roads we took. 

A few weeds grip the dirt 

and hold 

---

like weeds (we’re told) 

around a whale-shocked 

prophet’s head. Unlikely plot 

of an old book. 

---

On scraggle hedges 

where uncommon rains erode  

the desert 

light exists. 

---

And when I close 

my eyes 

gnarled, ragged roots of stars 

milk filaments of moon 

---

hard scimitars 

on seeds 

of sun 

and sparks 

---

of finespun 

nebula 

clutch havocked 

thought 

---

like weeds clutched Jonah. 

When I close my eyes 

a few weeds by a desert road 

clutch light. 

---

Some buried reason’s lode 

of sight 

in the foreswallowed 

dark.