“Nunc Dimittis” by DC Reid

September 22, 2025

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Nunc Dimittis” by DC Reid, which first appeared in Poetry Pause in July 2020. Due to its formatting, this poem is only available as an image.

Nunc Dimittis

By DC Reid

It is morning and I am kneeling
in the garden
— Patrick Lane

It is morning and I am kneeling
in the garden
— Patrick Lane

As if forsythia were a yellow pathway
through wandering air

to the face of the girl in Vermeer’s painting
asking why her fine
skin cheek is afraid.

As if the last river gorge of Atlantis
were a silver ring
of silent blue water.

As if Picasso’s
African women of Avignon
could turn to horses
and their snorts leave
the Austrian Wittgenstein,

the German Heidegger,
the Husserl
in their endless coming to now?

Am I genuflecting in the garden?
I don’t know,

but three griefs I cannot understand:
the small Teresa,
fingers spread to and
away from awakening; a mythical god’s

insistence on joy;
the splinter of rose emerging
from my face.
Ours is a cold country,
and espaliered fruit in southern sun makes it

no less cold, on the most august day.

Can the windmill undo its spiraling?
I would like to know.

As if green tomatoes
come after cold, before the girl’s cheek,

one who walks green water,
arbutus skin
that peels like pages
of a white book.

Would you, if you could
tell the girl how it will be,

that her painter is the residence of her questions,
the dry river gorges
of Osoyoos, of Keremeos?

I return to the garden and my feet touch not the ground.

Green tomatoes rise into my hands, the girl’s windmill,

hydra blue against blue of windsock,
full cheeked on neck of land.

Can a pearl be afraid?
Her windmill
turns to me

and asks whether it may now take its leave.

First appeared in Poetry Pause in July 2020.

DC Reid is an author and a steadfast advocate for the Canadian literary community, having served as the president for the Federation of BC Writers, Victoria Book Prize Society, and League of Canadian Poets. He has won more than twenty awards for his work, including the 2023 Professional Outdoor Media Association of Canada gold medal for books for his memoir A Man and His River: a 25-year love affair with a wild island waterway. In between fly fishing trips, Reid has published 18 books including 11 collections of poetry, a novel, a work of literary nonfiction, and five books on fishing. His poems and stories have been published in magazines around the world and his fishing articles have been published in magazines, newspapers, and on websites across North America. A 2015 PoeTrain Laureate, he holds a BSc in zoology and biochemistry from the University of Calgary, an Honours BA in English and philosophy from the University of Liverpool, and a master’s in public administration from the University of Victoria. His most recent book is Poems: Selected and New, published by Ekstasis Editions.

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