The Cure
The infection in my thumb was like an epidemic of
all that had turned unworthy recently a strange
culmination of grief and loss residing in broken skin
trapped puss and pain that swirled into my knuckles
and joints And I knew even as it began that it needed
a doctor’s care the worst of course was that those
antibiotics would do nothing for the hole of bereftness
that tore through me when my mother told me she
wanted to die that there was nothing left here for her
to do We don’t believe our parents will leave us
that they’ll ever want to go but their bodies abate
retire retreat And while I think it’s quite normal
and natural to get medication for an infection in my
thumb I ask what can heal a body broken by time
cynicism now too great to want to extend the journey
Old Forest, Gaspé, Quebec
The scent of an old forest carries me along the Appalachian range
into the Percé Geopark where I find a carpet of moss a floor of crevices
a dark cave fantastical magical recalling Merlin Gandalf
where William Logan began Canada’s geological mapping in 1843
in this basin of curved and knotted trunks where branches speak
and rocks respond I am lost here labyrinth carried on an old
scent while I seek a new one a way out of the maze
After the Belvedere, Third District
They sit together in a Romanian restaurant on the
Ballegasse eating non-Viennese food forgetting past
transgressions they don’t even come to mind in this
neutral place of no history not their history where
they recentre reset after parents have died children
have grown They are renewed like Klimt’s canvas
in gold leaf and platinum each kiss like the first
Stadtpark, Vienna
I had never seen birds mate had no idea what it looked like
the endless pigeon strutting clucking big thick iridescent
neck a stallion of ornithological origins One feathered lady
wanted nothing to do with him managed to escape his sounds
his pernicious dance as he strode across her path Another
let him mount her his wings spreading like an auspicious angel
And then it was done a hop-on hop-off bus looking then to
find another hen I am rarely a spectator of such unions
wonder about the romance of relations in the wild
Carolyne Van Der Meer is a Montreal journalist, public relations professional and university lecturer. Her articles, essays, short stories and poems have been published internationally. She has five published books: Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience (WLUP, 2014); Journeywoman (Inanna, 2017); Heart of Goodness: The Life of Marguerite Bourgeoys in 30 Poems | Du Coeur à l’âme : La vie de Marguerite Bourgeoys en 30 poèmes (Guernica Editions, 2020); Sensorial (Inanna, 2022); and All This As I Stand By (Ekstasis Editions, 2024). She runs a small PR consultancy practice.
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