Vanishing Beach
At night, the water level rises and the
beach vanishes into the tide.
I stand on the overhanging cliff and
look for shadows of the lost
city under the waves.
In the morning, the water recedes
and I am given back all I ever missed.
For a while, I wished I could
live in a small shed on that
ledge overlooking the shore.
But I want these rituals of returning,
fleeing and finding my way back,
to the waves and the tide and the stones
through the mist gathering over and around us.
I like the way that desire takes
the place of disappearance.
Nature Has Limited Patience for the Human Condition
I think that growing old here
—in the smiling silence between
the ocean and the marshes, among
more crows than neighbours, with
no way out except by fallible car—
would only lead to swelling grief.
It is a treacherous crawl across the cliff face
to reach the rock I perch on to see the beach.
Twilight is growing like a cloud on my left knee,
which I have already, several times,
dashed carelessly against the stones.
One day, my joints will not withstand the slog.
But this week my cartilage is young
and does not yet mind.
Creatures That Were Not
Sprites
After a heavy fog, there is
a second fog, fragmented.
Pearls of mist cling in cloudy
strings to all the formerly
unseen spider webs and the
forest is suddenly full of sprites.
Puffins
A
large bird is sitting on a rock that
is
half-submerged in seawater.
The
bird looks like a puffin,
which
makes no sense in this harbour.
I
trip a bit on the beach shale
as
I’m hurrying down to identify the bird,
and
it flies off at the sound of clattering.
Mammoths
The
rocks that are uncovered at low tide
look
like a herd of woolly mammoths
with
their backs to the cold.
When
I step on their spines,
the
thick hairs of seaweed squelch
and
slip away in sheets,
almost
taking me with them.
Certain Crows
According
to your father, the five crows
of
the harbour meet and converse
at
the house of his neighbour, who
feeds
them. But I see the crows every
time
I walk through the woods behind
your
father’s house and I swear
they’re
trying to talk to me.
Signs in
the Southern Hemisphere
Deception Island
the sea
god breathes at low
tide,
sends heat rising from the
black
beach; a caldera is a
warm con
that keeps back
the storms
but not the ash,
which
comes to cover all and
bury the
whalers anew.
penguins,
unwitting,
attend the
graves.
Paradise Bay
big-eyed
in the endless
light of
summer, we
stayed the
season in
the
harbour until darkness
overtook
our days
Deep Lake
the voluminous
blue of it
could turn
the dead sea to
palest
green; the shore is laid
with seal
corpses embalmed
by a
century of salt that
will not let the water be still
Dry Valleys
blood
falls
but rain
has not
since
earth’s first
human
footprint.
in their
stone houses,
even
bacteria hide from
the katabatic winds.
Jade Wallace's poetry and fiction have
appeared or are forthcoming in Canadian Literature, This Magazine,
Hermine Annual, and elsewhere. They are the reviews editor for CAROUSEL
and the author of several chapbooks, most recently the collaborative A
Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books, 2020) and A Barely Concealed Design
(Puddles of Sky Press, 2020), under the moniker MA|DE. Stay in touch:
jadewallace.ca.