substitution 01

The mallard that hugs the edge of the pond
her young making sleepy
heaps like a pile of old pillows
bent and greasy
with use
and her wide awake
the stripe of purple on her wing
for my heavy eyelid
for the flicker of dark thought

* * *

I've been home since mid-May and dandling a baby since mid-June, so M and I haven't spent as much time in restaurants as we had previously. It has meant returning to cooking, to re-learning the science of substitution that is cooking.

It has also meant learning and re-learning stillness, as I had to I inhabit my house and our car in a very different way after baby. They were no longer places to move through but places where I paused, where I was restricted to whatever was within arm's reach while Anna fed.

These two shifts led to a series of very small poems, which I will be posting over the next few weeks.

This first one was written just after baby was born. We tried to escape the heat of the house by going for walks most nights in Assiniboine Park, where everything - the gardens, the denizens of the duck pond - seemed to be in sync with us.