Right now is what dwindling feels like, despite
the mulberry outside my window steadfastly
anchoring its taproot. The new century counts planets
that might support rooted beings and ravenous predators.
But stardust piles up on lines connecting dots
in constellations, blurring them into nebulae. Shapeless
experience waffles between concrete and abstract, accounting
for the popularity of horoscopes, especially when Jupiter enters
Aries and we vacillate, like volcanoes heaving ash
before the pyroclastic flow, collapsing before tsunami, dwindling
until the next cycle. I abstractly shake dew from ripe mulberries.
Or I lie down, gazing at shivering green tracery non-existent
a couple of months ago and just as soon to vanish.
A more or less concrete cup of coffee balances on my belly,
wobbling to the diastolic and systolic rhythms of my heart.
If Leaf, Then Arpeggio
by Camille Martin
$4
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
Camille Martin, a Toronto poet, is the author of Sonnets (Shearsman Books, 2010) and Codes of Public Sleep (BookThug, 2007). Her work has been widely published in journals in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Her current work in progress is a collection of double sonnets. She is also engaged in a project funded by the Ontario Arts Council: a long poem (working title: “The Evangeline Papers”) based on her Cajun/Acadian heritage and her recent visit to Nova Scotia to participate in an archaeological dig at Beaubassin and to research Acadian and Mik’maq history and culture. She earned an MFA in Poetry at the University of New Orleans and a Ph.D. in English at Louisiana State University. Currently she teaches writing and literature at Ryerson University. Her website is http://www.camillemartin.ca and her blog is http://rogueembryo.wordpress.com
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