isobelmtl
Writing under a Montreal sky
Category: Poetry
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Gold in the gutter The hour, the golden hour has come For you to flutter, for you to fall. Your song becomes a stutter, a cry. The others lie though they too were so proud against the sky. Gold and high but no more can they fly the flag of beauty. Gold…
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Clothes blowing on the line for the first time this enclosed Spring. Pink t-shirt reaches out arms to clasp close a child, a friend, chin on the other’s warm shoulder – a long embrace. But not today. Cold wind breezes through the arms, the body that cannot meet another. At the track where I walk…
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In the train, the first train to run over the brand new tracks sat Sonya. The clank, the hiss, the slamming of doors as the huge weight of steel, wood, coal, luggage, passengers, moved slowly out of Windsor Station. The jolts, sudden lurches, settled into a steady rocking flow out over the St. Lawrence plain,…
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Today in my garden. HARD SPRING Spring in Montreal is a breech birth. We can feel it coming. We can feel the earth groaning, absorbing the ice and snow of months of frigid darkness. The sun, it’s warmth no longer faint, fickle, theoretical, coaxes, wheedles the first snowdrops, crocuses. These are never picked. Now come…
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Last night, just a few miles from the site of the real-life event that inspires the piece, we attended a performance of “Bodas de Sangre” (Blood Wedding) by Frederico Garcia Lorca. Thank goodness I had read the play in translation last year as, naturally, the performance was in Spanish. Lorca, famous for his collaboration…
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Hello pale blossom. Hello damp cool green beauty so frail, so delicate forcing your frail delicate way up through dark dense earth. Hello faint hope, hello rebirth hello vanquisher of winter, pale bell that heralds all the rest. Golden trumpets and scarlet or dark frilled tulips and later roses, lilies , dahlias and exuberant vines.…
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Heedless of the calendar three spirits emerged into misty late November days. The merciful gardener learning of impending frost clipped and slipped them into a little crystal vase. Saved, but do they miss the homely chaos of the little city plot? Miss leaves, birds, wind, the cold mist and faint light of an alley light?…
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On Tuesday I read at a charming Cafe in Ste Anne de Bellevue. Twigs and Leaves is located on the main drag just above the waterfront strip and almost under the bridge that leads to Ile Perrot. Street number 73 I think. Search it out and go there. Although it was only my second reading…
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Yesterday the branches and twigs were covered with light snow and with an icy coating glistening in the noon sun.My grandchildren come to have lunch with me on Wednesday. As we were walking back to school after the lunch break, I drew their attention to the sun shining on the bushes bearing their bright…
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Today just a few scenes from a fine day walking around the city. Besides the lovely colonial architecture which has been preserved in San Miguel we often see something pretty to catch the eye. I love this piñata high over one of the streets leading from the central garden. Don’t know who will be…