Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “The burning stops” by Kelly Shepherd.

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The burning stops

By Kelly Shepherd

when leaves are gone, when summer flickers out.

The way out of the dilemma is into it.

But desire is endless.

The man in the moon is thirsty twice a month.

The voice of the autumn poplar gets louder

and more insistent. Until it has no more to say.

A windscatter goes one way,

a landing magpie the other.

Are feral dogs more comfortable around ghosts?

Are recipes really rituals, and vice-versa?

I love you, she said, but I would hate you

if you stayed with me without loving me.

You are tempted to locate

a perfect point of stillness in between.

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Copyright © Kelly Shepherd

Kelly Shepherd has been a construction worker in northern Alberta and a kindergarten teacher in South Korea. His third poetry collection, DOG AND MOON, was published by Oskana in 2025. INSOMNIA BIRD (Thistledown, 2018), his second, won the 2019 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. He’s written eight chapbooks, and he’s a poetry editor for the environmental philosophy journal THE TRUMPETER. Originally from Smithers, BC, Kelly lives and teaches on Treaty 6 territory, in Edmonton.

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