“Starlight Tours” by Douglas Sinclair
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Starlight Tours” by Douglas Sinclair, part of the 2026 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection.
Starlight Tours
By Douglas Sinclair
Stars are miracles of light in the night sky
whose brilliance transcends space and time
to stir up the cosmic dust of evolution
and shower the heavens with the sheer
audacity of creationโs will to survive
the cold logic of the universe.
This is what we look up to
wherever we are in the world.
Something to wish upon or to marvel at
not to die under
in the deep freeze of a Saskatoon winter night
where the snow snuggles up to the white-tipped trees
frosty fields sleep easily in the darkness
and the distant horizon looms like a gaping mouth
swallowing the tail-lights of a runaway car
and the lonely look of an abandoned man.
The Saskatoon Police Service
has launched another starlight tour
Reserved exclusively for Indians
and not just any Indian but those most vulnerable
to the harsh bite of a prairie wind
shards of ice piercing the skin
eyes frozen shut
legs colder than the frigid air
unable to walk
on a frozen road where the silence
is only broken by the manโs moan
whose mind shivers as much as his body quakes
as he pulls a blanket of snow up to his neck
And miles to go before he sleeps.
And miles to go before he sleeps.
Copyright ยฉ Douglas Sinclair
Published as part of the 2026 Poem in Your Pocket Day collection.
Douglas Sinclair is a member of Peguis First Nation in Treaty One territory in Manitoba, and a full member of the League of Canadian Poets. He has self-published one book of poetry, reflections from a broken stream in 2014. Originally from Winnipeg, Sinclair attended the University of Winnipeg studying Classics and then moved to McGill University in Montreal where he studied poetry and linguistics, graduating in 1978. Douglas Sinclair is married with three adult daughters and currently lives in Hamilton. He is currently working on a new book of poems, Beyond the Edge of Being.
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