1

It was a stowaway,

a colourful hat worn through customs

by the daughter

of an immigrant mining family.

2

It flew out of a couch's pastel

patterns, a musty

living-room spirit drawn to the wallpaper's vines.

3

It was perpetual: it poked

holes in the children's snowsuits.

It talked to shovels, the snow puddles

drying in the porch. It was curiosity

all covered with feathers:

summer trying to understand

the thermometer's fall.

4

It must have looked at winter

with the ambition

of a suntan salesman:

seeing its chance to make millions,

it flew out an open window,

flapping like an assembly of flags.

5

It was a collection of salvation

army handkerchiefs,

a hang-glider in a hailstorm,

a sea urchin arguing

with an assembly of waves.

6

It must have flown for blocks:

its lungs going asthmatic,

drying like wrinkled apricots

while the chambers of its heart

migrated to opposite poles.

7

It disappeared into us,

into the extended forecast,

the woods' imagination,

the street lights' stationary tribe.