Jim Taylor's Columns - 'Soft Edges' and 'Sharp Edges'

To make Comments write directly to Jim at jimt@quixotic.ca

 

31

Aug

2021

Rain!

Author: Jim Taylor

This poem came about when we finally got some serious rain, ending months of drought, fire, heat domes. Somehow it turned into an exercise in alliteration. 

            Instead of reading it silently, try rolling the words around on your tongue, See if it makes any difference. 

 

 

Moisture seeps into the soil. 

Invisible fungi wrap filaments around roots

that thread through the dry debris

of former life; they suck sustenance

back into the synapses of the forest floor. 

The green fuse lights; sap creeps into

 capillaries long closed for self-defence.

Tree tops wave triumphantly. 

 

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Categories: Poetry

Tags: rain, rejoicing

12

Jul

2021

Sparrow

Author: Jim Taylor

            This poem came about by the confluence of two completely different factors. 

`           One, obviously, was finding dying sparrow on the concrete at the entry to my garage.

            The second was an article in The Conversation Canada, about journaling. If you’re not sure what to write, the article suggested (I’m paraphrasing) list what you can note from your senses. Five things you see; four things you hear; three things you touch; two things you smell; one thing you taste. 

            I tried that exercise while thinking about the bird whose body I had just moved into my garbage can, and suddenly they started forming a poem. So here it is – in part...


...

I pick it up, a mortal morsel cupped in my hands.

It makes no effort to flap, to fly.

It rests on my skin, light as a snowflake,

soft as a lover’s touch. 

I move it to a shady spot, where the day’s heat 

bears down on it less heavily. 

 

The bright beads of its eyes flick towards me.

Then close. 

 

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Categories: Poetry

Tags: death, Sparrow, feathers

5

Jun

2021

215

Author: Jim Taylor

             Anger does not produce good poetry. But poetry can reduce anger. So here you are. It’s certainly not the best of my poems, but I needed to write it. So here are a few lines about the 215 bodies discovered undergrouind at the Kamloops Residential School:

 

And now we lie, mouths gagged with soil,

silenced witnesses to a system

that robbed and stole and deprecated

in the name of a loving God.

 

Who did not breathe new life into our clay.

 

Yet we shall rise, 

and point with fleshless fingers 

at your pious posturing...





 


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10

Nov

2020

Seven by seven

Author: Jim Taylor

This poem started with an unusually early snowfall. I’ll tell you the rest of the story after you read the poem. 

 

Snow falls softly on cedars; 

fat white flakes sift down, pile up; 

branches bend, protest in pain; 

white cones burden bunched berries; 

autumn grass falls flat below 

an ermine cloak;  drifting specks 

draw a veil across distance.  


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Categories: Poetry

Tags: darkness, Snow, campfire

20

Oct

2020

Hope

Author: Jim Taylor

In the night, a firefly blinks

once

a single speck of light, a mote, a flake

flung into a slow, black, sloe-black

river of loneliness

rippling through

the gnarled fingers of the darkling forest

seeking a silent echo


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Categories: Poetry

Tags: hope, future, fireflies

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