Tag Archives: Canada

Sonnet: Barbara Loots, ‘Intimations’

Leave a reply

This is a Wordsworth morning. Not a leaf
trembles, the water shimmers beneath a shawl
of vapor, and the wild primordial call
of one loon sounds its tremolo of grief
across the lake. The sunlight like a thief
infiltrates slowly, making shadows crawl
out of the hollows where each animal,
furred, feathered, winged or scaled, to its brief
life awakens. My awakened eyes
and all the senses that belong to me
discover in the love that glorifies
whatever was and is and is to be
the wonder and perpetual surprise
of momentary immortality.

*****

Barbara Loots writes: “My husband Bill and I spend summer months in Canada on a tiny pile of granite dropped by a glacier in the middle of Blackwater Lake near Parry Sound, Ontario. Bill’s father purchased the island right after WWII for the tiny price of a property owned by the Crown, in a deal similar to the American Homestead Act: you must build a domicile on it within 18 months. The cottage cobbled together at that time still stands, with a few improvements, not yet including running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing. We bring a lot of books. I often meet the Muse among the towering White Pines. Poems are a natural consequence. Many of them appear in my collection The Beekeeper and other love poems (Kelsay Books 2020).”

“Intimations” appeared in the Fall 2025 issue of The Lyric (Volume 105 Number 4).

After decades of publishing her poems, Barbara Loots has laurels to rest on, but doesn’t. Residing in Kansas City, Missouri, Barbara and her husband, Bill Dickinson, are pleased to share the household with an acrobatic tuxedo kitty named Jane Austen. Barbara has work forthcoming in The Orchards Journal, The Shining Years II anthology, and I-70 Review. Her concerns and complaints can be found on Facebook and at barbaraloots.com. She serves as the review editor for Light Poetry Magazine (see Guidelines at lightpoetrymagazine.com). 

“Early morning lake” by josterpi is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Using form: John Beaton, ‘Stillbirth’

4 Replies

I.

The day I left for Canada my mother
and father quelled their tears. We held and hugged.
He said, “We three may never see each other
alive again.” That leaving
hooked my gut and tugged.

We never did. He died and left her widowed
so next time we three met was at his tomb.
Our parting afterwards had been foreshadowed–
the breakage of the cord
that fed me from her womb.

We rode on gondolas to summits she
had never dreamed of. Mountains could not buy
her heart from where they’d raised the family–
we shared reunions linked
by contrails in the sky.

II.

Hi, Mum. It’s me, from Canada, your John.
Och, John! You’ve caught me in an awful state!
I know. I’m sad to hear that Henry’s gone.
The one that was my brother?
My memory’s not great.

He’s back now, from the War. Oh dear, they’re here.
Who? They’re all against me. Who? The clique.
They’ve done such nasty things. They think I’m queer.
I think I’ll kill myself.
So how’s the house this week?

Och this one’s grand. I moved two days ago.
And Johnny helped. I think he’s at the door.
I’ll have to run now, Henry. Cheerio.
Don’t go. The phone is dead.
The cord exists no more.

III.

A winter storm comes sweeping down the hills
and, gusting, blasts umbrellas inside-out.
They ring the grave like blighted daffodils
and rain-black mourners hold,
like buffeted peat-burn trout.

I take the tasselled pall rope, let it slide,
and with my brothers ease the coffin down;
it slips across the lip of a great divide
and sinks what was my mother–
a shuck, a wrinkled gown.

Gales carry off the prayer as it is spoken.
I cast the rope adrift. The rains of Skye
slap my back. Again, a cord has broken–
this time my lungs won’t fill.
I try but cannot cry.

*****

John Beaton writes: ” This one is autobiographical. Using the metaphor of an umbilical cord, it tells how emigration stretches and breaks family connections. The title refers to the old practice alluded to in the last stanza of holding the newborn upside down and slapping it on the back till a cry indicates its lungs have started to work and it is breathing on its own. At the end of the poem, grief prevents such a cry. 
The dementia dialog is taken pretty much verbatim from an international phone call to my mother. That’s the part that crystallized the abacb rhyme scheme and 55533 meter. The dialog fell into place with that pattern and I felt it worked for the rest of the poem too. I think the last two lines of each stanza, with the first being unrhymed and the second linking through masculine rhyme with line two, act like an alexandrine and combine to give a closure effect.
The three-part structure represents three stages of escalating disconnection.”

John Beaton’s metrical poetry has been widely published and has won numerous awards. He recites from memory as a spoken word performer and is author of Leaving Camustianavaig published by Word Galaxy Press, which includes this poem. Raised in the Scottish Highlands, John lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.
https://www.john-beaton.com/

“Cill Chriosd Graveyard Isle of Skye Scotland” by Tour Scotland Photographs is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Poem: ‘Good Enough For Me’

5 Replies

The wide world has its glories
In a rich complexity
But sitting watching the sun set
Is good enough for me.

Canada has six time zones
From sea to sea to sea
But one tide lapping where I sit
Is good enough for me.

The muezzins in the Saudi mosques
Wake all to pray and pee
But a rooster crowing in the bush
Is good enough for me.

And Singapore is lush and green
And managed prettily
But scrub grass and a sandy beach
Are good enough for me.
All – good enough for me.

This poem was originally published in Snakeskin, and then found a place in The Hypertexts. It’s a simple poem, but after all we lead simple lives, sitting on our little planet going round our little star on the fringe of a minor galaxy. So the mood of the poem is: Our lives are unimportant, and brief. Relax and enjoy.