isobelmtl

Writing under a Montreal sky

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about

Isobel Cunningham has published short fiction and poetry. Her book, Northern Compass is available on Amazon. She was born in Wales but Montreal is her adopted home. She speaks French, Modern Greek ( it’s a fun story) and a little Spanish…oh, English too, of course. She welcomes comments on her blog and looks forward to chatting with you over cyber-space.

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  • Butterflies at the beach

      Butterfly ladies gossip, criticize They talk about the lovely dragon-flies That see-through look is so pase A little decorum is more classey We in black and white are the height of chic That shimmering business is just a trick To catch the eye, why we know better A classy dragon-fly?  I’ve never met her!…

  • Country Life or City Life?

                 Remember when your teacher set you a topic for a composition?  Here’s one:  Which is better, life in the country or life in the city?  This topic falls into the category of “compare and contrast”.  Some of us preferred “description” which allowed our fevered imaginations to soar (or crash)…

  • Loon calling on the Lake

            I am staying at a friend’s cottage in the country.  It is a two hour drive north of Montreal.  The cottage and the cottages of many of her relatives stands on the shore of a long narrow lake.  I can see launches gliding by on the shimmering water.  The sky which…

  • Where are the blue petals?

            This bush, one of the few plants in my garden whose name I do not know, was covered with pretty blue flowers until a heavy rain two days ago.  Every green seed pod you see was the centre of a blue flower with at least four sky blue petals.  Now that’s…

  • Night Garden

              Standing among among fireflies at dusk, The late dusk of mid summer The little lights heartened me, lifted me up and made me see how they in their fragility, had courage. Tiny creatures, flashing across a few feet of darkness. To them it must be as miles as for me…

  • Hard tasks

              I don’t want to be admired for accomplishing difficult tasks.  I don’t want to be the reliable one, the kind one, the strong uncomplaining one.  On a beautiful summer day I don’t want to spend hours scraping rust off convoluted steps, applying primer and then awful shiny paint.  ( Easy…

  • Being Busy

          Being  busy means drawing from the pace, from the combat, from the solution of “problems”, one’s personhood.  Being “busy” is drawing from victory, from juicy frustrations, even from the ineptitude of others, a certain satisfaction.how satisfying it is to know, sincerely and without boasting, without ego, that you are cleverer, more effective…

  • Catalpa trees

            There are many of these trees in my neighbourhood.  This is the first one that has bloomed.  The white flowers that are to me exactly like orchids cover the trees in early summer for such a short time…a week at most.  Then they fall and cover the sidewalks, the cars, the…

  • Shakespearean sonnet

      This is a hard form so. . . just so you know, it has to be in five stressed syllables to a line (iambic pentameter) .  It has to have 14 lines, the last 2 being a couplet that sums things up and the other lines have to be three four-line sections .  The…

  • Man-made and unmade

    Cars and houses and even an asphalt street rolling on up that hill wonders, real wonders for human beings a whole world to fill. Fashioning the world, drawn out, drawn, spun out to some fantastic peak Of art, of technology, of skill of stubborn persistence, of flawless technique Trial and error, over and over again…