Two poems by Sandy Martin - "A Prayer on the the Tundra, Early Fall," and "My Mother's Bones"

A Prayer On The Tundra, Early Fall

On the treeless plain, the growing season begs

for more time, yearns for a place to bury

deep roots, a place to marry seed and water.

Hunched against freezing winds, the earth’s own

beat slows, a drummer marking stillness.

Young birthed in the short summer sun

learn lichen, reindeer moss, grasshopper

and salmon, know these will nourish

the long sleeps, the treks across the plains

and across again. Falcons turn southward

ahead of the first deep freeze, calling

sandpiper, calling artic tern.  The devoted

face north and say, stay. Always this leaving

and returning, as if forgetting were forgiveness.

My Mother’s Bones

My mother’s bones began crumbling

before she knew the words

that would describe the curve

of her spine, the transparent lace

of her bones. Somewhere the broad strokes of her life,

color bright on every canvas, bled reds

and blues and purples, began naming themselves

white, white, white.

I imagine my mother’s skeleton knowing

its own voice, communing

in the graveyards of coral reefs:

the dead zones of our birthplace.

I imagine mollusks white and naked,

their shells corroded, their seas too acidic

for building.

Calcium, the new gold.

My mother’s bones hold her, small and curled.

Does she dream of Turtle Bay, the jeweled

coral flashing morse code? Does she

smell the seawater in her own blood, does she

turn her ear to the palm of her hands

and whisper, listen, listen, listen?

Sandy Martin lives in BC on a small island in the Salish Sea between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. She shares her life with her husband, an everchanging number of dogs and two donkeys. She has worked in creative nonfiction, short stories and, her first love, poetry. Sandy is currently working on her first novel.

See Brian Henry’s schedule here, including writing workshops, weekly online writing classes, and weekend retreats in, Alliston, Bolton, Barrie, Brampton, Burlington, Caledon, Collingwood, Georgetown, Georgina, Guelph, Hamilton, Jackson’s Point, Kingston, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Midland, Mississauga, Oakville, Ottawa, Peterborough, St. Catharines, Southampton, Sudbury, Toronto, Windsor, Woodstock, Halton, Muskoka, Peel, Simcoe, York Region, the GTA, Ontario and beyond.