Familiarity

when I smooth back my wet hair
how I look like my brothers, the shape
of rising cheeks and hooded eyes
salt-and-pepper roots older than time
Mom’s Jantz curl frizzing at the temples
a right-side cowlick over the high
forehead she always tried to cover
using a lock coloured with Loving Care
horizontal lines map tired paths
beneath my chin and toothy smile
vertical lines between my brows
plow deeper furrows as I lean
into the vanity mirror searching
for something far deeper
than the size of my pores

Take These Broken Wings

In the safe comfort of a cosy place, I wake almost content.
The new friend who snores gently in the other bed is good company.
She is laid back, undemanding and in tune with the spirit.

The poet in me wants to move to Rosebud.
To write art, capture touch, love unwounded
but I am not yet ready to know myself that well.

For today, wings still bandaged
I return to the city
until I am called out of hiding.

On Malcolm Guite's Singing Bowl

(Read/listen to Singing Bowl first)

I begin the song exactly where I am

and read it first, the black print on white field

while the space behind my eyes fills with volcanic pressure

erupts into my frontal lobe and tears run terrified

away from the bomb blast of epiphany

I let him read it then to me, his clipped British accent

oddly smoothing the standing hair

on the back of my tense neck, crowned with pain

from years of trying to keep a cap on what he says

was both about how to pray and how to fulfil my vocation as a poet

Guttural groan escapes my lips like a long shackled muse

finally seeing the light of day, unsure whether to laugh

moan or write and know, somehow, all three are worship

Today I have chosen to take the road less travelled

as the Singing Bowl unlocks the gate.