This Flower

This flower is purple,

its petals beating like

fish fins in a strong September

wave-wind.

It has lived since early June 

as shelter for a golden caterpillar.

Its soil, a test-spot for a juvenile

digging squirrel.

It is one of many, in a large pot on

a small deck, claiming its glory

every morning, making more flowers

rooting deep and then, its green overflowing,

cascading down to be a ladder up

for an ant, a resting ground for

a white butterfly.

This flower is common, small.

It is a gift, more than sufficient –

lusty dark purple,

its subtle scent

caressing 

after an afternoon rain.

This Stone

This stone is riddled

with ridges, sharp dimensions

that fall off if touched too hard.

Shaped like a mountain, and if a mountain,

it would be impossible to climb 

to its pointed peak – soft and flat on one side, 

coarse and pimpled on the other.

This stone is blue

like a fog coming in, covering a clear day.

White in spots, silver in others with

a hole dead centre. If you blow into it,

it whistles, and you can’t see how deep it

goes because this stone is thick and heavy,

a landscape on its own, a planet

really 

with unexpected turns 

and contrary directions.

Shiny dark blue here, then 

a whole cloud rises

and overtakes.

I don’t know if it is a crystal or a stone or

a combination of both. 

It sings and it has a face,

several faces. 

If you hold it away from you it looks like 

a robed man holding a stick, and then, 

turning it over,

the back of an old man sitting,

gazing out over

a river or more likely,

a secluded stream.

This Mouse

This mouse was special.

I remember her even though 

it was over 30 years ago.

She carried her many babies

from one exposed corner to a hidden one,

trailing bravely across the counter, offspring

in her mouth, grasping one at a time,

back and forth – each infant so tiny and transparent

you could see the milk they just suckled in their bellies,

each so helpless with closed eyes and barely a sound.

This mouse was somebody.

She was grey and looked typical for a mouse.

All of us working there loved her

and let her and her offspring live. Eventually

we moved them to a safe cage and later 

to an abandoned warehouse. We fed her 

and watch her feed until her babies grew

and weaned.

This mouse risked her own exposure and life

to save her brood, each time running back and forth.

If she wasn’t at an animal sanctuary, no doubt

she would have been killed.

This mouse shocked me with her audacity,

showed me the courage necessary for motherhood,

which some call instinct, but I call and know it

as love.

This Tree

This tree is huge,

has been there since the beginning

when we moved here.

When my son was a young teenager

he had a wooden sword and swung at this tree

damaging its bark with playful ignorance. 

We were told it would die,

but over a decade later it lives.

Last winter its evergreen leaves turned brown 

and I thought that was it, but then the spring came

and now late summer and it is fully green again,

defying its fate.

This tree’s roots bubble up from the ground. 

They tilted our old shed 

so we had to get a new one,

changing the area where we put it on.

Many squirrels play in this tree and leap from its branches

to another tree and back again.

When we had our bird feeder, a hawk would perch

in this tree, watching and swooping down for its meal.

That is why we no longer have a bird feeder.

Out of the four trees in our yard, 

this tree is my favorite.

It didn’t sprout like the one that is a weed,

soaring and wide and choking out

the sky or like our neighbour’s with its walnuts

toxifying the ground and an overhead danger

in the early fall.

This tree is wounded but peaceful. 

It is a guardian of our yard and home,

like a friend I can count on,

mostly beautiful, always there.

This Cat

This cat is not a cat

but a hybrid of cat, dog and human,

talking all the time, holding conversations

in chirps, trills and occasional long meows.

His coat is cushiony, shines silver in the light

and hardly sheds. He has a white diamond patch

in the centre of his chest.

He is demanding and affectionate

on his terms. He panic-cries if he

wakes up alone and only calms down

after he is held and spoken to softly.

He screams and throws his whole body 

against the door if he is locked in a room,

because a plumber came 

and this cat wants to be involved,

say hi and then oversee.

If you tease this cat or laugh at him,

his dignity is spurned and he’ll hunt you down,

nipping at your ankles, patiently waiting,

never forgetting. There is a special war-cry 

he has for this.

When my husband has him on his lap,

this cat looks into my husband’s eyes and pets his face.

I think he is part Korat, this cat, though his brother

is a pale orange, sweet and gentle and

very much all cat.

This cat has a name. 

He is muscular. He is king

from the moment he came here

from the shelter. Sometimes

his tongue just sticks out a little –

a picture like that is what first drew me to him.

I knew he would be trouble, this cat.

I knew I would love him and he would be

unlike any other cat I have known,

a toddler-cat, relentlessly demanding,

a singular force, a gravity well,

shifting everything in this home

with his extravagance and deep attachment.

This Man

This man is refined –

his incomparable intellect,

the way he moves his hand, his eyes

to look up from resting.

This man is charged

with electrical inspiration,

every day singing, making notes

on paper, in the sky, pushed forward

by an inner force, potent and searing,

tracing existing edges, making new edges

and shapes from sand.

He is always sharp with humour and often

he is joyful, dancing in spurts 

or making strange sounds

like an animal let out of his cage, 

touching grass for the first time.

This man grew up in home of brutal hostility –

a violent loveless father and an ally for a mother,

but never a protector, and a brother who was once

vibrant and on fire then became soiled with bitterness

and died before he reached sixty.

This man has always been a devoted father. 

When his children were young every afternoon

he took them on adventures to local parks he named,

and they explored these sacred fantasies without money

and just a stroller. He read to them every night –

sometimes other people’s books, sometimes 

his own stories he told them, inserting

them as heroes and stars of the tales.

When his children grew older, there were rough years –

re-defining love, stretching love into hurt

and anger clogged then bursting. But that is the past, 

and now, his family is tenderly connected everyday

with rich affection – each loving him 

and each loving each other. He has heaven again 

with his family and in his home.

This man is a husband. He is the kindest, 

most entertaining and the most uncompromising

of lovers and friends – never letting me get away 

with darkness – ridged barriers of purity I am called

to account if I every cross, our mutual understanding

clear and unaltered through the years. 

After my mother died, he read to me every night, 

tales of detectives, of an isolated Swedish man 

finding life on a stark iced-covered island. 

When my father died, he did the same

in a different way – being there for me, sitting beside me,

allowing my grief to live for years as the main course,

patient, supporting, until that grief became background. 

This man never made much of an income,

but works at his craft as though every day

is his last – at the library, in the basement and on

walks where he fine tunes and rehearses his creations.

This man is a genius, many know this, but 

in many ways, he has never been received 

or seen by the greater world. 

Those who have seen him,

know, and call him what he is – a legend, 

a master of his art. 

This man has never 

diluted or degraded his dignity 

just to receive attention,

nor has he twisted his moral and spiritual core

just because he is getting older and what he believed 

when he was younger – that his work was guaranteed

to receive world-wide recognition –

has not been the case, has not been valued on

a wide-scale for its rare magnificence.

And though that baffles him, 

has left a living wound inside him, he has not

grown hard and distorted by blaming others nor

by relinquishing his sturdy and fecund faith.

This man is the best man I have ever known,

and no one knows him like I do. 

It has been a radiant privilege to love this man,

to walk decades together hand in hand.

He is an iconoclast. He follows

Jesus. He is my love and he is golden, 

beautiful as the first altered leaf, 

the first breeze in the first inklings 

of a brilliant oncoming fall. 

This Anxiety

This anxiety is a spear

that churns and burrows

turning to soot its surrounding flesh.

Every day it widens to fill my body’s

cavity, telling me I’m never going 

to make it, neither are my husband nor

my children, shouting at me at

the corner store, from the rubber band

around the washing machine, from 

electrical outlets, from monarch butterflies

that float close to my back window.

This anxiety doesn’t care if I pray or

stay the course of a disciplined morning –

it can smooth over for a bit but then it charges,

first digging at the dirt in relentless fury.

I think I should go on medication

but I won’t. I’ve lived so long with it

and I think it is mostly circumstantial –

having no material security nor hope for anything

but short-term survival.

I am not sure why Jesus doesn’t take it,

heal it with a snap even when I offer it

into the divine light-fold and ask

for mercy.

This anxiety makes me believe

it is me, that it is all I own and all

I am. It is so intense I cry,

left trying to just breathe. It is

exhausting to hold it at bay.

It is nearly impossible some days

to wake up, to face another

afternoon. 

This anxiety is only anxiety

and I have my books, my writing, 

my family and God. I have love

beyond expectation, on all sides

buffering me in, overpowering

this anxiety and the ways 

this anxiety sometimes succeeds 

in sabotaging my faith and flow.

These Children

These children, my children 

are not children

anymore but have grown

into tall and formidable dreammakers,

dreamkeepers, lovers on their own paths

of unique and obsessive interests.

These children, my children 

are spectacular individuals,

both giving their all to their focus,

both with a strong moral code, 

and stronger compassion

for the less-than-lucky.

One is a painter, working 

with rich unexpected tones

with intense, living eyes

and auras that pulse and breathe.

She is also a policy maker, 

a helper to the almost-homeless,

brilliant in her capacity to thrive in the system,

and then shift the system enough 

to make a difference.

She is a film maker and a crafter

of original formations – using old cardboard boxes

or strings and stuff she has lying around her house

to astound us all with her one-of-a-kind

gifts and creations.

One is a warrior, with a warrior’s blood

and unwavering determination, creativity

in motion, passion sparking up his alert eyes,

daily drip-wet training, more interested

in comradery than in competition, always helping

others succeed while maintaining his own 

forever rising, personal standard.

He is also an old-watch collector, repairer,

taking apart beautiful broken things

at his desk, with his magnifier 

and many tiny tools,

with patience, stillness and precision, 

making those beautiful things

spin again, in sync again.

These children, my children, 

are both close to me and my husband. 

One, we share texts with every day – 

sometimes for hours texting, sometimes briefly. 

We have our haircuts, restaurant lunches, 

and weekly home visits, as she lives on her own, 

with her partner and their two cats. 

The other, we have our sacred morning

conversations over breakfast, while

cleaning the kitchen, and often, if time permits,

throughout the day. 

Throughout the day we laugh

and acknowledge our mutual respect and love.

These children, my children

share a medical condition that

has never been seen in medical books.

They have had countless hospital visits,

many needles, tests and time off school,

especially when they were younger, when

no one knew what it would mean, or if 

they would be okay when they were older.

These children have walked through hellscapes, 

watching, supporting 

their dear core-family grandmother

through a year of dying unto her death. 

One journeyed to Cambodia, the other spent

a month in Thailand.

They have both, themselves, in different ways, 

nearly died. Sometimes they fell 

into oxygen-deprived lightless pits,

and one, we feared for years would never get out, 

but they are both on grass, on land now, walking, 

building their uncommon worlds.

These children, my children are blessed,

have both found their lifelong partner-loves.

They are water drinkers, vegetarians

since they were born. 

They are original and devoted 

to everyone they care for.

They are exactly who they are supposed to be,

these children, my children, 

adults, tidal forces of giving inspiration,

thriving, still, with far to go.

This Friend

This friend was more

than any other friend, a sister,

a fellow traveler on a quest

we understood as just ours.

This friend was a reader

of Carl Jung, e.e. cummings,

and Thomas Merton, 

a monk, a nun, a cleaner of toilets and bathtubs,

quiet in her airy sanctum.

She was a walker, a reciter

of spoken poetry and of prayers

gifted to her from the angels.

She was either terrifying in her 

do-not-talk-to-me seriousness or laughing

with colourful yellow shoes, making acquaintances 

at every turn.

She was intense, and light, almost-white blue

like a blue dwarf star, burning,

radiating, speeding, on the threshold

always, of combusting.

We were roommates at different times.

Once, in her mother’s old Montreal home, and once, 

near a Toronto valley-park, in an apartment 

that we made into our monastery.

This friend and I loved our conversations

of abstract truths and revelations. 

We loved words and images, poetry,

making monuments, for us alone.

We would sit across from each other

for hours, at the coffee shop, or on the phone,

weaving in and out these exciting exchanges,

grounded in our real-life dilemmas.

This friend is someone I would have died for,

someone I deeply loved, admired and needed

like family. She never betrayed me

or left me stranded in a place of danger.

I did lose this friend. Many years ago,

I lost her and when I sneak-check in on her, 

I don’t know who she is anymore. All I know 

is that she was a true friend and I miss her

and will go on missing her as I know for me

this friendship was the height of all friendships.

I also know this friend has strayed, 

locked for a long while into a conspiratorial

twisted fantasy place of dark belonging. 

Sometimes I am angry with this friend

for going where she went, for leaving me

without her, for giving up her rarified beauty

for a taste of finally being a-part-of and maybe

being able get out of poverty and survive.

I accept what has happened but I don’t

honestly understand.

I remember this friend

as a powerhouse of directed clarity and 

full-to-the-brim sharp imagination.

I honour this friend, her once shocking courage

to forge authentic no-place-in this-world alliances,

to challenge accepted norms, 

even in the simple things,

in the movement of her arms

and in her joys.

.

I still love this friend

as my dearest (other than my husband) friend,

though I know our intimacy, our sisterhood

is over, is wrapped in a tight, sealed ball,

never to be unwrapped

never to be restored.

This Father

This father was a good father,

a man alive with many unrealized dreams.

He grew up in India and went

to boarding school in Shimla.

When he was fourteen, he and his family 

moved to London, and weeks later,

his own father died suddenly.

He started working right away 

as he had four siblings and a mother

with brown skin who lived before in India

with servants, a cook and a nanny.

When he landed his first job at a newspaper, 

he ran home and yelled with unharnessed exuberance,

“Ma, the sky’s the limit!”

This father went to war in Korea,

he boxed and he cooked and he didn’t know 

if he ever killed someone as he shot his gun 

but couldn’t see what or who he was shooting at.

This father was paralyzed on half of his face

from a childhood illness, so he knew what it was

to be outcast, to never quite belong.

This father had a father who was an English solider,

conducting trains through the Indian terrain.

He gave coal for free to those who needed it

and prayed every day for God’s grace and protection.

This father had a mother who he loved 

and honoured as someone sacred, to be cherished.

She was of Indian descent, an unwavering Catholic 

and a mother of six, as she lost a child, a little girl 

who she still dreamed of every night, 

even when she reached eighty years.

This father moved to Canada and became

a journalist. He won awards and a University scholarship. 

He wanted to write novels, so he and his wife and two children 

went to Spain for a year, and he wrote. When he got home

he would wake up every morning at 4 a.m., typing, 

creating plots, revising plots. After he faced a few rejections, 

he gave up his dream, promising to return to it when he retired.

This father never retired but died suddenly at sixty-two. 

When he was in his early 50s, his older brother died, it was 

one of the few times he cried. He felt sorrow and he felt guilt. 

He said – It should have been me.

This father read many books, at least ten a week. 

He would go to the library each Friday and 

a new pile of books would sit on a table by the front door.

This father recited memorized Shakespeare

at the dinner table and old poems that rhymed. 

His booming voice, as dramatic and engaged 

as a stage performer.

This father took his children to many classes.

He would sit and wait and read in his car

for hours, waiting while his daughter

took acting, figure skating, and his son,

hockey. When I was young, he carried me

on his shoulders, he held my hand often 

and would gaze at me frequently with loving pride.

This father worked 

as an editor for a major newspaper.

He was good at his job, respected in his job,

and gave it his all, but he was never satisfied.

For this father had an ever-erupting

anger in him, energy that stirred wildly

and never rested even when he tried to

quash it with drink.

This father loved children,

and they loved him, gathering around

his story-telling magnetic sphere. This father never

got to be a grandfather as he died too young.

This father had great depth 

and even greater generosity.

The same year his own mother died

and just days before he died,

(although he didn’t know he was going to die), 

this father sat me down

and told me that he was finally at peace,

with his life, with himself. That finally

he forgave himself for being who he was.

And I know life was hard for this father,

that he was always living 

with an internal raging war,

but this father was such a good man, 

missed and admired on a grand scope. 

At his funeral, one after another

came to me to tell me so, that 

which meant so much, and I already knew.

This father was perfect to me, for me

he was the sun – untouchable strength,

aggressive existence, but so giving, 

so protecting, so warm.

This Mother

This mother lived 

until she was ninety-four.

Her married parents journeyed from Poland

when they were seventeen on a boat

to Chicago, later moving to Canada.

Her father worked in a shoe factory.

He had a sister who stayed in Poland and

was taken during the war to a Russian gulag.

I never met her father. From what I was told,

he was a harsh man, a violent man who threw

cutlery on the floor if the table wasn’t set right,

if his wife dared to complain.

This mother’s mother was a Catholic, 

she had 19 children. Some died before

they turned one, one died when he was three. 

This mother almost died too when she was young

of diphtheria. The doctor told her father to let 

her die as they had too many children, but he refused.

This mother lost her older brother when he was 21.

It was his last mission before he came home.

It was World War II and he was a pilot who went

missing in action. This mother said his name was Paul,

and she never stopped thinking of him, even though

she had many other brothers and sisters – a whole

brood of tightly knit siblings who got together throughout

the year, every year, singing and laughing and having

a genuine good time with very little resentments 

between any of them. When they were younger, 

this mother and all her siblings legally changed 

their last name from its Polish origins 

to a more palatable easy-to-pronounce one, 

so they could get jobs and be taken seriously.

This mother grew up in a house, sharing 

one bedroom with her many sisters. That house 

was haunted. I know because I lived there for a time –

there were dark grey entities under the floorboards,

in the old bathroom and in every bedroom, hovering like fog. 

This mother knew extreme poverty

as child. It was the Great Depression and there

were so many mouths to feed with very little money.

One time, this mother lost a can of beans, coming

home from the corner store, rolling it down a street hill, 

it fell into a sewer. She was so afraid to go home, 

she ran away, for a short time.

This mother was a journalist, she went to Europe

as a young women, and when she came home,

after studying fashion design, she worked for

a newspaper. She wrote about celebrities,

and met many celebrities, but most treasured 

and important to her was befriending Marilyn Monroe 

for a summer when she worked at Jasper.

She had many pictures of them together but they were stolen, 

save for one, which she carried with her in her wallet 

until she died, eager to show whoever she met.

This mother also wrote about strange people, psychics

who would visit us and spoke to cats, and astral planed

to other planets. One claimed to be a descendant of the

true Count Dracula, sharing his blood condition.

This mother wasn’t a great mother at first. At the time 

she had me she was 36. She was always kind, but inattentive. 

Her friends would say – “I can’t imagine you as mother.” 

As she loved to drink, to go parties, socialize day and night,

dancing on tables – her feet hanging and swinging

out the car window on the way home. 

This mother later became a great mother.

Even when I lived away from her home, 

she would pick me up at station with my

30-pound sculptures and drive to me to my classes

to the cabin tucked away in the woods.

Before I left home, when I was 14 and 15,

I wrote short stories and I would call her at her work

and read them to her. She listened and applauded and hardly 

ever criticized. Later when I started writing poetry,

she told me to write romance novels for money 

and save the poetry as a hobby.

This mother lost her husband when she was sixty-six.

She spiraled for years, surrounding herself with alcoholics, 

people who used her and distracted her from her grief.

This mother grew out of that, finding something 

again to live for when she became grandmother. 

She was full of adventure and play, 

enlivening the atmosphere with her very breath, 

loving and vivacious, and so happy

to have grandchildren. Her grandchildren, 

my children, eagerly anticipated and celebrated her 

weekly arrivals, they danced around and watched

out the window, waiting for her car to pull in.

And when they got older, they remained close, 

playing games, playing cards,

debating, painting nails and watching videos.

This mother told my brother and I

that she would share martinis with our long-dead father 

on her balcony, and they would talk for hours 

about their mutual past. She also wrote him letters.

This mother was such a wonderful mother

and friend. We talked every day on the phone, often twice. 

We sometimes cried and argued, but always told

each other how much we loved each other.

She was compassionate and forever helping.

She was very spiritual. She loved God and Jesus,

as she strove to learn and love the true Jesus, 

not the one of her upbringing. 

Everyone loved her and would vie for her attention.

Before she got sick, she lived on her own

in a large apartment with a glorious view. 

She went out every day, and when she wasn’t out, 

she was on the phone. She never got depressed

or bitter or slowed down, but had energy

unheard of for one her age. She thoroughly enjoyed 

her rich and varied blessings.

By the time the cancer hit she was 93. 

She was not the youngest, but the last to go

of her siblings. One time, when she was sick

and on morphine, she said something horrible to me. 

And though she was sick and though it was hard,

I confronted her and told her how it hurt. 

She couldn’t even believe she said it, and there,

she turned, holding both of my hands in both of hers, 

the whites turning red around their turquoise centers, 

she said to me – “Don’t you know how much I love you?

You are my whole world.”

This mother was my mother.

It’s been more than two years since she

left. I was alone with her when she died,

and I saw her welcomed home.

This mother was like a large cut diamond, 

child-like, sparkling, bold. She was determined

and always ready for action.

She is gone but that is just an illusion.

She is here in the hummingbird 

visiting on our deck, in her voice

still strong in my ears, 

and in the love she gave,

knitting my family a touchstone

sustaining core.

This House

This house is an old house,

built in 1929 as one of many

of the same types of houses,

attached on one side, a thin alley

on the other.

This house has a red door, three bedrooms

and a wildlife-filled green backyard.

One time I heard my neighbour (who has a house

just like ours) call her house a shoebox.

I understand but I don’t understand because

though this house is small for a house, 

it has everything needed for a family of four. 

It has rooms bright with light, two staircases, 

two bathrooms and places to sit and talk and have coffee.

Sometimes I walk through this house 

after 28 years, and I am still overwhelmed 

by its grace – warm and inviting,

ample. I never get tired of this house.

Sometimes secretly I tell it thank you 

and kiss its exposed brick wall.

This house is not a house but a family member.

She is maternal, and was a gift from

my mother. We moved here 

just before our daughter turned one. 

Three years later, our son was born. 

This house is a protector and also has a temper. 

If we tread too far into darkness, it explodes. 

One time a sewer pipe burst in the basement.

It was the right time, and a wake-up call.

Once we also had a wasp infestation, 

wasps living in the walls. We needed to clean.

Then we needed to reclaim.

When I first saw this house I fell in love with her. 

I have lived in many houses –

nine before I became a teenager, 

and many more than ten after that.

But this was the only house I loved, the only home

I have ever truly had. The ones I lived in as a child

in Montreal were fine, but I felt nothing for them.

The one that looked out over the lake, I hated.

Even though my parents loved it, I knew

it had a soiled energy, something within it 

that was deliberately vindictive, unkind. After that,

there were slews of apartments, some cold,

some hostile, none ever, a place to rest.

The couple and their golden retriever 

who lived here before us, loved this house too.

They never wanted to move, but had to because

there was a medical condition, and there were stairs.

The woman who lived here painted hidden hearts 

throughout the house, and she carved a heart on 

the wooden backyard shed. The hearts 

have been painted over and the shed is new, 

but the vines she painted on the front porch walls 

remain and I never want to paint over them.

My husband loves this house, and our children do too.

My daughter no longer lives in this house 

but she still calls it home, and she still has her own room. 

This house is so perfect, that my adult son 

said to me “Sometimes I think, living here, 

I am living in a beautiful dream.” 

This house has also been home to many creatures,

to eight cats, a dog, a bird, two rats and two guinea pigs.

They have all been happy here, and sometimes I swear

it was like living in a Disney movie – 

their furred or feathered bodies in sync, 

affectionate, playful, merged.

This house is in need of many repairs.

It has had some repairs but needs more. 

She is an old lady, a gentle but strong spirit.

She is a comfort, a sanctuary, a refuge.

This house is our house

and I will take care of her

as she has taken care of us – 

holding us between her walls,

still holding us, for decades now

giving us space to foster love and breathe.

This Faith

This faith can see

what it couldn’t see before,

that there are no tricks or

complex rituals to perform

or ancient tongues to speak

to bring me one inch closer to God.

This faith at one time was thin and leaned

on astrology and psychic guess-work

to appease my loss of control, ease my dread

and desperation that bled 

into existential crisis.

This faith has streamlined, knowing

now God is one and the only

way to the light is one-on-one,

no one has the cure, only myself

face to face with Jesus, fears all around

then bypassed. I know that God is a Trinity

of the Father and of the Holy Spirit-Mother, 

and of the Child – speaker of truth, radical reformer 

of Earthy laws, embodiment of tender mercy

that sees and loves us all.

This faith has asked me to be clean,

and everyday sees more crevices and nooks 

that need to be cleaned 

and then re-cleaned.

This faith has studied many philosophers,

found its key from a certain philosopher,

has also been open 

to the complexities of the cosmos, 

science, the shifting realities

of knowledge and unknowing.

This faith is not blind.

It has no priest, no institution, 

but has my husband to talk to 

when doubts surface and at times overload, 

or when blessings come and sync us, celebrating

the wisdom of an ever-abundant grace.

This faith is demanding,

demands to be the priority

and to be singular. This faith

is complete surrender, 

it creates a longing to embrace this faith 

to be encased within it, so it is air, 

ground, imagination.

This faith demands a wanting 

for this faith so great 

there can be no wanting

for anything more.

Allison Grayhurst has been nominated for “Best of the Net” six times. She has over 1,400 poems published in over 530 international journals, including translations of her work. She has 25 published books of poetry and six chapbooks. She is an ethical vegan and lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com