Slowly by Eleonore Schönmaier
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Slowly” by Eleonore Schönmaier.
Slowly
By Eleonore Schönmaier
Last time you gave
me a jar of seaweed
you gathered and pickled for
me. I rationed it out
slowly. Bliss. Did the green bulbous
strands contain an essential
mineral I was lacking or
was in only the memory of
those days on your island? This
time on my last day we
sit in a cafe eating our
favorite lemon tarts and
you reach in your packsack
and bring out three pomegranates
from the tree in your garden.
I pack them gently among
my summer dresses and
at home I set them on
the glass tabletop
afraid to slice
into them.
Copyright © Eleonore Schönmaier
Previously published in Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021).
Eleonore Schönmaier is the author of poetry, essays, and fiction. Born into a working class migrant family, she was raised in a northern wilderness settlement. She has also lived on the shores of Lake Ontario, the North Sea, and the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Her many awards include the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, the National Broadsheet Contest prize, the Sheldon Currie Fiction award (second place), the Dave Williamson National Short Story award (honourable mention), and the Earle Birney Prize. In 2022 she received a Writers’ Union of Canada grant to write an essay about love. Her poems have been set to music by Greek, Dutch, Scottish, American and Canadian composers including Carmen Braden, Michalis Paraskakis, and Emily Doolittle. The New European Ensemble and the St Andrews New Music Ensemble have performed her poetry in concert. Her latest collection is Field Guide to the Lost Flower of Crete (McGill-Queen’s University Press). Wavelengths of Your Song (MQUP) was published in German translation as Wellenlängen deines Liedes (parasitenpresse, 2020). Dust Blown Side of the Journey (MQUP) was a finalist for the Eyelands Book Awards 2020 (Greece). Her poetry has been widely anthologized in the United States and Canada including in Best Canadian Poetry.
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