In this cruellest month,
the icy breeze sparkles
like mica
and hints of glaciers on its breath
as yet another false spring
suffocates under wet snow
as heavy as
three decades of missing you.
A widow’s grief cycles in seasons,
joy brief as summer,
and then too many cold dark days
without your warm grin to turn to,
the sun caught on your freckles,
and in the amber of your eyes.
I ache for you still,
your arms the only true home
I’ve known.
I imagine a life where
we aged together,
celebrated milestones,
laughed about grey hairs
and shared stories –
a longing as tragic
and futile
as sending messages to Heaven
by balloon.
♦♦♦
Dymphny Dronyk is a Qualified Mediator and is also a poet, editor, translator, and a story doula. She is passionate about the magic of story and has woven words for money and for love for more than 30 years. She has facilitated unique writing and conflict management workshops across Canada. Her volume of poetry, Contrary Infatuations, (Frontenac House) was short-listed for the Pat Lowther Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. She is co-publisher and co-editor at House of Blue Skies Publishing, whose bestselling anthologies include 2014’s The Calgary Project – A City Map in Verse and Visual. Dymphny has served on the boards of the Southern Alberta Brain Injury Society, Writers’ Guild of Alberta, the League of Canadian Poets, and the Creative Nonfiction Collective.
♦
photo credit: Sheree Gillcrist
The Litter I See Project 