Three Poems by Linda King

 

 

 

nights that empty the past 

 

 

 

this is not a bedtime story 

 

we keep counting the dead children 

 

 

searchers with pale hope and resignation 

 

in equal measure 

 

 

your eyes count the weapons 

 

shopping carts of donated ammunition 

 

 

everyone here knows the sounds of leaving 

 

knows smallness and slender wishes 

 

 

some nights empty the past 

 

erase any chance of a future 

 

 

all of it disappearing 

 

like dew    or dying stars 

 

 

 

 

 

cold comfort 

 

 

 

shuttered rooms    shattered afternoons 

 

what’s needed is a new language 

 

for tragedy 

 

 

you are not prepared    you ask 

 

for a new translation    a gilding 

 

of the adjectives 

 

 

fragments from a different genre 

 

a foreign accent    somewhere 

 

beyond your patch 

 

 

there are words you could have 

 

turned yourself into 

 

but they are cold comfort 

 

 

full of alibis 

 

sleight of hand philosophies 

 

and ten hail mary's

 

 

 

 

 

in the gather round

 

 

 

in the gather round    a place were light collects 

 

both geography and loss    where it is always autumn 

 

the season of rust and blood    your restless heart forgets 

 

how you would tumble to the word for shelter 

 

no branches left    to catch your fall 

 

and no one willing to atone

Linda King is the author of five poetry Collections including Reality Wayfarers (Shoe Music Press, 2014) and antibodies in the alphabet (BlazeVOX Books, 2019).  Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals (including Lothlorien) in Canada and internationally. King lives and writes on The Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.