Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “From the Eleventh Floor Balcony” by Melanie Craig-Hansford.

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From the Eleventh Floor Balcony

By Melanie Craig-Hansford

I remember the smell

acrid—

musty still waters.

Lake Ontario under

blue-grey storm clouds,

forked lightning against the horizon.

Turbines frantic in the dying

light. Shifting pigment,

now mint-green against

a golden rod sky.

Follow the flight of webbed feet,

punctuated honks, closer now.

Lake meets river —

a bevy of mute swans.

Animated islands caught in the gyre.

Necks bent backwards under wing.

Pale mounds in search of rest

like broken chunks of ice

bobbing on white caps.

Black bundles of Canadian geese

and cormorants break up swan

sentences like commas on waves.

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Copyright © Melanie Craig-Hansford

Melanie Craig-Hansford is a poet and artist living in Kingston, Ontario. Her first poetry collection, Tonight We Sleep with the Window Open, was published in 2023.

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