In spring the willows’ black bark is oiled stone.
Its color soaked by the snowflakes’ whiteness –
Not the whiter or whitest that faded winter.
The streets are empty for tarry brooks.
The forest estuaries over their banks blanked.
Not in this world did I appear living.
You thought I saw you in anti-flash white.
I was overexposed; it’s hard to describe
How the past turned black or invisible.
The only true colors of the world
Are those seen most perfectly in the starry night.
Or in the drowned world at the near shore
Of the brook. In the dell, the indelible
That the black everything-never-was turns into.
Orpheus knew her in the dream’s fake memory
The years were lifelike and invisible
After looking at nothing hard he woke up
Before reaching to write her biography
With the light on all disappears
And off, she comes again
That is how darkness sees
No sleepers remember what’s said to them
First recollection – in the distance music
Even the Unreal knew him for lyric
After the appearance the girl was blond
With the tenderness of newness
Does that make sensing different
Or the present, physicality and future’s pen black?
It does and did and that was how the dead once lived
Michael Follow grew up in Nova Scotia. He finished his BA in 2006 and now runs a small business in Halifax.
March 12, 2009
That Tune Clutches my Heart shortlisted for The Ethel Wilson
Fiction Prize
January 22, 2009
Robert Bringhurst wins American Printing history Association Award
February 10, 2009
New From Gaspereau Press
