PoetryMagazine.com

Glen Sorestad
CANADA


Glen Sorestad is a well published Canadian poet whose work has appeared and continues to appear in print and online in many countries. He has over twenty poetry books published and has appeared in over sixty anthologies and textbooks. His latest volume is Hazards of Eden: Poems from the Southwestfrom Lamar University Press.

Retired Farmers in the City

They may sell their farms, leave them behind

with the worn-out cultivator and harrows,

with the long-retired John Deere tractor;

 

they may take up urban residences where

no morning chores crook their fingers,

or call out to be done, soon as the sun rises.

 

But come that first big thaw of Spring,  

the initial trickle of running water courses

in their blood, you will know them

 

by their rubber boots, crowbars, spades,

as they trench the neighbourhood roads

to speed the snow melt to the drains.

The World As It Is

 

A woman goes out to a bar for a few drinks with friends.

She has a very fine time, but she never makes it home.

She is now data -- a missing person file.

 

A teary high school freshie asks the principal for help

opening his new locker. The principal stops what he is doing;

he goes to unlock the freshie’s locker.

 

A man kneels on the ground, hands bound behind him,

moments before a terrorist sword decapitates him

in the name of some misinterpreted ism.

 

A fire truck arrives at an elderly woman’s home;

a fireman climbs the ladder to rescue a frightened kitten

from its lofty tree perch, returns it to its owner.

 

Frequent Flyers

 

Two days before Winter Solstice,  

a loose string of Canada Geese

wings through a flutter of snow fluff,

 

passing southeast above our home

to forage remnants of harvest grain

hidden beneath its cover of white.

 

What can they be seeing from above?.

Surely these late migrants must be

ticked off with snow and paltry pickings,

 

though they seem quite unconcerned,

as they repeat their usual morning flights,

zeroing in on whatever food they find.

 

Clad in their down-filled winter wear

they pay little heed to our calendar,

nor care a smidgeon about the Solstice.

 

That they are here this winter day,

this sudden presence is adrenalin

enough to make me want

 

to sing out beyond my window

into the swirl of wind and flakes

their momentary passage.

 

 

On Having Given My Book as a Gift

 

 

Somewhere in these pages you will

find me, though that will not be your intent.

Maybe you enjoy poems and always

divorce them from the solitary souls

who sat and wrote them just for someone

like you. Or any other reader. A poem is

never anonymous; it may be spontaneous

as the eruption of a volcano,

or as falling in love.

 

I am here in these pages, dear reader,

as surely as your mother or your father

can be found in every little gesture,

every little mannerism

you wear each day

and never consider for a moment,

in each sequence of actions you take

to do something, from brushing your hair

to folding your clothes,

or holding your piece of toast

in the morning. Perhaps you will know

more about me than ever I intended

to reveal, but such is the risk

the poet takes with each poem.

Neither poet nor reader escapes this.

 

 

The Morning News

 

 

Outside my window: fresh snow shimmers --

new canvas, new day, promise.

 

In early light, an erratic scribble, 

familiar tracks. Several overnight hares,

 

footprints circle wildly, criss-cross,

spin hither and yon, no pattern.


The story is confusing -- creatures crazed

by moon-fever, romping in madcap tag,

 

a mild February moonlit El Nino lark?

Runes from the midnight rabbits.

 

 






  
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