A dark day,
the first of
your absence.
You're flying forever
over the city, over
soundless depths
of cloud.
How to snare time.
I take pictures
through veiled windows,
glad of the greyness balancing
light inside
and outside.
Focus on infinity,
depth of field to the blead horizon:
stalking space instead.
You leave so easily
take off through smoke and disappear
into the harshness
of pure sun
while I, behind veils, negotiate
with the sun,
tamper with light,
make do with barely perceptible shadows.
Florence Treadwell "Cleaving"
Florence Treadwell teaches French at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont. Originally from France she emigrated to Canada at age twenty-five. "Cleaving" is her first book of poetry in which she juxtaposes poems written in her second language with photographs of her nativel land.
Think, my heart
wintering in this alien tongue
of the garden lying in wait,
the coiled intelligence
infallible
tensing
inside the earth
Florence Treadwell
"Cleaving"