Garbage day after
the holidays: blue boxes
overflow. Wind skates
trash over fresh snow,
drifts to a halt on the fence.
I can feel like that –
torn open, smashed flat –
mourning my dead, the future
trumped, ice sheets cracking.
Nothing left to do
but pick up the pieces, hold
to what in the end
is all that I have –
trust as the light fades to cold
you’ll not leave me too.
♦
Betsy Struthers is the author of nine books of poetry — most recently All That Desire: New and Selected Poems — three novels and a book of short fictions. Winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and runner-up for the Milton Acorn Memorial People’s Poetry Award, her work has been extensively published in literary journals and anthologies. She is a past president of the League of Canadian Poets and lives in Peterborough, Ontario.
♦♦♦
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