Poems

In the Steps of Emily Carr

      When she got there
  The place had disappeared: only a line
Of totems straggled along the bayside
  Tipped from the true by winds that patterned
    through
The breast-high grass the ruins sat in.
 She began putting the place together
In careful paint - and then the cats,
   An army of them out of every quarter
Of the dank, forsaken clearing, crept
  Closer and closer in, yellow-eyed and lean,
Purring, pleading to be taken back
  Into the circle of recognitions they had known
Before the dominion of the nettle and the rank
  Ferocity of sea-grass, bushes overgrown
...