“Deliverance” by Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Deliverance” by Lorri Neilsen Glenn, part of the 2026 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection.
Deliverance
By Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Travel the serpentine road along the coast in a daze,
wake to the world when the car stops. Let your steps
rustle on gravel, ears catch the ticking of the cooling
engine. Across the yard, shrouded by lead blue dusk,
a swift movement: something out there breathes. Deer
limbs scissor along the shoreline belowโfour,
then four more: swallow your heart. This grey velour, this winter
waningโ green shoots wonโt break ground for weeks.
Barn shingles litter the grass, aftermath of another storm.
Accept it all, say the ancientsโwere their winters longer
as they grew older? Is it wrong to crave delight, a silvery
spur to hope. To welcome the fog of diversion, another
episode, another, or online checkouts that promise parcels
at the door? Or better to seek tough ideas, beguiling ones
bursting with light and desire, magic in the real, a cue to
the long view: a planet that can heal, a news day without
guns or thugs. Silence tonight is stirred by whispering
water, you find comfort knowing trees you planted years
ago root deeper, sinter the soil. Yet along the highway
dense woods fall under the teeth of developersโ machines,
a wider road by summer, the spruce, stripped and stacked,
once sheltered crows, held nests for owls. Greedโs ticking
turnstile. When did you last feel the metallic rush of an
inland stream, pickerel slicking cold against your shins?
Or climbed a tree, divined worlds in sand. What do you
bring to the cusp of spring? Sun and green will return,
cormorant wings snag the horizon, water will flow from
the hills to the sea, rabbits weave fresh paths, but for now
itโs dark and damp, water a slate backdrop, sky a fluorescent
river. On the stoop, an old Flyer toboggan leans against
the house. You peel off shoes and socks, step on icy blades
of dormant grass, release your soles to the skin of the earth.
Copyright ยฉ Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Published as part of the 2026 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection.
Lorri Neilsen Glennโs most recent books include The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Known and Been (Nimbus Publishing) and Following the River: Traces of Red River Women (Wolsak and Wynn), an award-winning work about her Indigenous grandmothers and their contemporaries. The first Halifax Poet Laureate of Mรฉtis descent, Lorri is Professor Emerita at Mount Saint Vincent University and a mentor in The University of Kingโs College MFA program in creative nonfiction.
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