Four Seasons

Susan Briscoe December 13, 2009 Four poems

1.

Spring
in the subtlest colours of winter:

faint pink of maple,
golden tinge of birch,

yet spruce almost black
against the whitest greys.

We wake to a field mouse,
soft brown fur and clean white belly.

I could skin the whole family,
stitch pretty mittens.



2.

The coyotes are coming down from the mountains
where the hunting has grown thin.

They set the valley dogs to barking, hard monotones
like stones the size for throwing.

Last year they got the cats, fattened
on a daily breakfast of birds. Their ambush

devised, practised, refined.
The clever executions: 

hard shakes, snapped …

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Tenth Anniversary: Spring

ISSUE 43 Tenth Anniversary: Spring 2012

online content:

also in this issue:

  • Face the Music

    by Tim Falconer How can someone who passionately loves music also be a terrible singer? Tim Falconer takes up voice lessons—and discovers the surprising science of tone deafness.
  • The Big Job

    by Deni Y. Béchard As a teenager, Deni Y. Béchard went to Vancouver to live with his father, an ex-con with a penchant for telling tall tales. He met a man desperate to forget the past.
  • The Homesickness of Astronauts

    by Johanna Skibsrud "She felt a great sadness. She would remember next to nothing of this, even soon."
  • [see full issue contents]