Trying to start a poem
with the letter I
is an ordeal
in and of
itself.

She traces the subtle lines and strong
edges, steadying
her finger on the medicine cabinet.

She hesitates and
feels the oceans
recede.

A small dog on its haunches, waiting
to pounce. She  can taste
the cotton blood seeping
from her wounds in small,
sustained trickles.

Her eyes fall
and she pierces something
big with something
small.

Her finger falls,
crashing like a wrecking ball,
through the desperate blue of Toronto,

pulling a single brown petal,
back splashed by the emerald of her eyes.  

She mutters something I pretend not to hear,
and pours the heavy water over the city.

Then she sits back in her chair, with a knowing smile,
and coughs
into her marigold
tissue.

1
My face in the puddle on the street,
laying cast away
and gurgling with its last bursts of life
reminds me that nothing lives forever.

I am not that face,
dying in the puddle
inside it, I am something entirely different.

It’s somebody’s mother.
It can’t be me.
Her face droops to the ground in a perpetual frown.
I don’t like it.
I don’t want it.
It can’t be me.
2
My memory fails me and…..
I forget.
What is
that word?  
3
How do you get from there to here—
crying in a delivery room
to crying in the nursing home
because your family left you and you are all
alone.
Faster than you’d ever imagined.

Like my father said at Nana’s funeral,
the casket falling through the ground,
“Too soon”
4
Life
a fly against the window,
then
a fly twitching on the floor.

A tightly grasping hand,
Then,
The  abrupt
Loosening of the grip.

“English is a beautiful language,
a remarkably precise language
with a million words to choose from to deliver
your exact shade of meaning.”
- Laura Fraser


How clear, varied
and accurate.
How appropriate:
the choice of register,
style and terminology.
(Register: the use of elements such as
vocabulary, tone, sentence structure and terminology
appropriate
to the commentary.)

Language is clear, effective,
carefully chosen and precise,
with a high degree
of accuracy
in grammar, vocabulary and sentence construction;
register and style are effective and
appropriate
to the commentary.