THE WINGED MOON
CATHERINE GRAHAM
At Wonder's Estrangement
Evening rains through me.
Faces frozen in the midst—no
going back to the borrowed heart.
Gauze-strip rivers, threading notes.
What playing enters me then? Making
air-lace, no room for false heat.
Only kindness kindles love
from its quick. Your arrival
isn’t one of pain.
Sundown dusks a slow
brief bloom. With nearing,
your name darkens into shape.
Torn wind, the halving of atoms
breaks our silence. Inside
sun maps the yellow pillow.
Gone: moonflower, maple-artist,
snowy owls and sanderlings.
We need angels spinning
on pins, tight as light. Things
circle back if we live
long enough. Sure, the arms
lift into branches, growth
by standing still. Fly
far from skin’s fabric.
Catherine Graham’s eighth book, Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, Toronto Book Award, and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. Her sixth poetry collection, The Celery Forest, was named a CBC Best Book of the Year. She is the author of two novels: her award-winning debut Quarry, and The Most Cunning Heart. Published internationally, her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, broadcast on CBC Radio and have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry. A past judge for the CBC Poetry Prize, she teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto SCS, where she won an Excellence in Teaching Award. She also leads the Toronto International Festival of Authors’ book club and co-hosts The Hummingbird Podcast, part of the WNED PBS Amplify app. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected Poems is her latest book. Visit her online: catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet