Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Scattering” by Marvyne Jenoff.

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Scattering

By Marvyne Jenoff

Days since your death

and I’m still calling others by your name.

Not only friends:

Servers where we used to meet for lunch,

even restaurant patrons. Bus drivers on routes

to the well-treed neighbourhoods we walked in.

Passengers, even on the subway; polite ones say,

Sorry, that’s not my name.

Perhaps there’s something in my voice

that causes them to really listen, and go home and say,

Someone strangely called me by this name today,

Have you heard of her?

Or log onto the internet (caught up with you at last!)

and post the question; soon there’s a world of people

wishing they’d known you.

And what of you yourself up there,

freed from your failing body: Do you realize how far

your name is spoken and relayed by others,

stretched thin to a wind-borne sound?

Fitting; but back here, back home,

no solid speaking presence.

Now we will never be able to agree:

What was the massive object

that poor squirrel was trying to carry up a tree?

And did it get where it was going?

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Copyright © Marvyne Jenoff

Previously published in Climbing the Rain (SIlver Bow Publishing, 2022)

“Toronto poet Marvyne Jenoff has been publishing in Canadian literary magazines since the 1960s. Also a visual artist, she has several books put out by literary presses. “Scattering,” is in memory of Carol McGirr, master storyteller. Jenoff’s poetry collection, Climbing the Rain, came out in 2022. Her hybrid memoir, Tree and Fruit: A Writer’s Life and Work (2024), is available through Amazon. A new book of poems, Night of the Filing Cabinet, is due out in 2026.

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