Spring/Summer 2006, Volume 22.3
Poetry
Hamish Guthrie
Hamish Guthrie has taught English and drama at White Oaks Secondary School in Oakville, Ontario, for over 30 years. His poetry has appeared in over 30 magazines and journals in Canada, the United States and England, including The Yale Literary Magazine, Malahat, Fiddlehead, and The Dalhousie Review. He has poetry forthcoming in Poetry East and Prairie Fire. He spends his summers in Missoula, Montana, with his wife and family. Other work by Taylor Graham published in Weber Studies can be seen at: Vol. 19.3
A Map of Grass
Summer unsettled us.
Birds watched
the chaos of
the first blue house
we tied down, flapping,
in the middle field.
The first path
to the river
crossed a crumbled fence.
Our feet mapped grass.
We intercepted snakes.
We neighboured bees
and moths.
Butterflies stopped
on the fat green pods
of milkweed.
Yellow finches candled
the green cedars.
Alfalfa turned purple.
We kettled fire
sometimes in a soup
of rain.
Owls watched
the stealing moles
and mice.
Night walks carried
the moon's kerosene.
The stars went out with us.
Cotted at night,
we zippered sleep.
Mornings gauzed
the river's surface
with white mist
when we walked down to it.
The Hammock
Here you read
the under-writing
of the leaves,
in a cradle
of hours.
You feel
the blue importance
of the sky.
You face up to it.
You are
out of step
with the house
all afternoon.
You lie
in an effortless
cloth wing.
A million leaves
close over you,
like the eyelids
of the sun.