“Midwinter Walk at the End of the World” by Tara Borin

March 26, 2024

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Midwinter Walk at the End of the World” by Tara Borin, part of our 2024 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection! Due to the formatting of this poem, it is only available as an image with alt text, and not as plain text.

Midwinter Walk at the End of the World

by Tara Borin

I walk my grief along a river that should be stopped by ice but isn’t dark channel of open water slow build of shelf-ice reaching across the dark swirling distance sky a shifting blue scattering scraps of cloud like gauze caught on rough boughs of black spruce In October I learned that gauze comes from Gaza learned that a lifelong refrain of too complicated was a lie— innocent people are being carpet-bombed as I walk my dog along the Yukon River nobody else around even though it’s noon sun just rising keffiyeh looped around my neck gathering my breath I want to march lift my voice alongside others drums thrumming my chest I want to live in a world where rivers freeze reliably and governments are not complicit in genocide I want to live in a world where we don’t need to march instead we’re free to care for one another in more intimate ways until then my feet beat free Palestine in the snow free free free us all

Tara Borin is a poet and writer living in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Dawson City, Yukon. Their debut full-length poetry collection, The Pit, was published by Nightwood Editions in March 2021. Their poetry has been anthologized in the League of Canadian Poets Feminist Caucus in Conversation chapbook (LCP Press, 2022), Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo (University of Regina Press, 2021), and Best New Poets in Canada 2018 (Quattro Books), as well as published in literary journals both online and in print. Tara is the 2022 winner of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes Borealis Prize: Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution.

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