Thaw

When the air no longer cut our faces and the sidewalk gives up its haul of squashed coffee cups and shredded flyers, I am walking again across Riverdale. The hem-wet fields, the footbridge over Don Valley, the grinning cracks of East Gerald.

Nothing has sprouted yet. But the big reveal is coming. All winter I’ve kept myself buried. My rooms smell stale with recycled ink and old tea bags. I’ve been occupied, and so far I have a few brief pieces to show for 2015:

—an interview with this year’s CWILA Critic-in-Residence, Lucas Crawford, on the Puritan’s Town Crier blog;

—a review of Kayla Czaga’s debut book of poems, For Your Safety Please Hold On, on the Arc Poetry Magazine site, and another of Kerry-Lee Powell’s Inheritance will soon appear (both books were recently nominated for a Gerald Lampert Award);

—and a poem on George Murray’s newpoetry.ca site, “Another View.” It’s an old, old poem that I’ve reworked many times and seems finally to have found its shape.

I’m more selective these days about what I want to take on. So each of these pieces are meaningful to me as those first goose honks of the spring. The ones you hear when you’re darting across a windy parking lot far above the 401, and you jerk your head up and see something magnificent flying overhead that had been trying to overtake you for some time.