Creatures, already dead, come here

Creatures, already dead, come here

One is my mother. Her smile a Siamese cat’s —
her ears sharp and tail proud as she blinks a wise-eyed stare.

One is a dead poet I love. His appearance wakes me
inside the dream I’m dreaming. I panic that he has died,
but in my sleep, he lives again.

Who is here and who has gone?

The abandoned shells of crabs are numinous
and litter the beach.

The smallest cormorant dreams
the soft salty flesh of crab. The beach sends ominous signs to my waking self.

One is a friend who died at sixteen, our lives briefly linked.

I walk though these dreams. Are they my own?
In a mask I walk. In a hand-sewn burgundy mask.

People who have died catch this terrible cough.
Die again.

I wake
to the waking world,
the dog on me breathes his shuddering sigh,
while the dog of my dreams
quietly
watches me.

About Yvonne Blomer

Yvonne Blomer is an award-winning poet and the author of the travel memoir Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur and three books of poetry. She is also an editor, teacher, and mentor in poetry and memoir. Yvonne served as the city of Victoria’s poet laureate from 2015-2018. In 2018, she curated and created a show of environmental ekphrastic poems in response to Robert Bateman’s art, the result of which is the collection Ravine, Mouse a Bird’s Beak (Nose in Book Publishing, 2018). In 2017, Yvonne edited the anthology Refugium: Poems for the Pacific (Caitlin Press), with poets responding to their connection to the Pacific from the west coast of North America, and as far away as Japan and New Zealand. Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds is the second in a trilogy of poetry anthologies with a focus on water. Yvonne would like to acknowledge the BC Arts Council for financial support in attending Arte Studio Ginestrelle Residency in Assisi, Italy, where this project began.

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