Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Slippage” by Susan McCaslin, which first appeared in Poetry Pause in June 2020.

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Slippage

By Susan McCaslin

Somewhere down a country lane

in an old family photo

you are holding me, mother

slender, your dark hair swept up off your neck

wearing a post-war print housedress

against dark curves of our blue Ford

my left twinned to your forearm

my long legs dangling in child’s pose

I am deep-breathing from toe to crown

before the 60s knocked you off kilter

before your gagging breakdown

left our family fear-fleshed

as if a child had somehow tumbled

from her mother’s arms

and crashed on her head

whether I dreamed or created

this scenario to explain our twinned worlds

all I know now is

your laughter bloomed, boomed

through mind scars and pain

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Copyright © Susan McCaslin

First appeared in Poetry Pause in June 2020.

Susan McCaslin has authored seventeen volumes of poetry including her most recent, Consider (Aeolus House, 2023. Sentient Stones, a hand-made chapbook (Raven Chapbooks, Salt Spring Island, BC) came out that year as well. Susan has edited two poetry anthologies, written a memoir, a volume of essays, and a volume of creative non-fiction. She completed her Ph.D. in English Literature at UBC in 1984 and taught English and Creative Writing at Douglas College in New Westminster, BC for 23 years. In 2012, she initiated the Han Shan Poetry Project, which drew on poetry to help save an endangered forest in Glen Valley near her home.

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