Abstraction by Melanie Craig-Hansford

October 28, 2022
Poem name: Abstraction Poet name: Melanie Craig-Hansford Poem: Abstraction Crows’ on bare branches a racket of corvid blather, and gossip about the murder next door. They answer each other in sequence, no bird squeal over squeal, there is space between complaints. A missed opportunity— rabbit roadkill squirrel in ditch. A banquet laid out in potholes, for this early spring the March sun is thin the ground is confused by a cycle of solid and soften on asphalt and pitch. My limbs are heavy respond like movement through glue. I also harden and thaw— want to make marks like the scratches of claw. I channel the stillness of trees to the rhythm of caws, and at my studio door I listen for the dialect of birds. Paper paths on stretched cloth— forest trails to nowhere. I dream solid into sand rip jagged lines as I tear at the paint. Punctured lesions on linen, gashes like bone on bone. Shapes emerge from beneath layers of milky mist. A record of my morning slowly appears from the staccato of feather and a cacophony of sinuous smears. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Melanie Craig-Hansford Forthcoming in (working title) Tonight We Sleep with the Window Open (Chapel Street Edition, 2023) Melanie Craig-Hansford lives in Hampton, New Brunswick. She retired from teaching high school in Ontario in 2014 and moved home to the Maritimes. She spends her time making art and writing poetry. Her poetry has appeared in chapbooks and journals and her first poetry collection will be published next year by Chapel Street Editions, Woodstock, New Brunswick.