“Red Kayak” by Sarah Klassen
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Red Kayak” by Sarah Klassen, which first appeared in Poetry Pause in August 2020.
Red Kayak
By Sarah Klassen
Around the luncheon table a difficult diagnosisย ย
upstaged gazpacho soup, spinach quiche.
all ordinary conversation. It might have been
dysfunction of a vital organ, brain gone awry,
blood flowing through the body with too few cells
or too many. Someone tried defining the difference
between a cure and healing and what that has to do
with us. Huge bursts of red geraniums caught our eye,
and bunches of blue lobelia. We abandoned
the complicated diagnosis, rushed to the balcony.
Against the flax-blue sky a silver aircraft,
still gaining altitude, gouged a straight path
Below the hanging baskets: a bright red kayak
heading upstream on the river. We watched
the solitary paddler strive against the current,
imagined flexed muscles, heart pumping good blood,
strong lungs heaving breath after breath.
We imagined the paddler singing. Then
resumed our conversation.ย
Copyright ยฉ Sarah Klassen
First appeared in Poetry Pause in August 2020.
Sarah Klassenย was born in Manitoba in 1932. A Winnipeg English teacher for many years, she also taught in Lithuania and Ukraine. Her poetry has received two National Magazine Poetry Awards, one silver, one gold. In 2017 Sarah Klassen was shortlisted for the Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry, and she has won Word Guild Awards and a High Plains award. Her published work includes eight poetry collections and four books of fiction.
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