Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Still Enough” by Carol Thornton, part of the League’s Fresh Voices program.

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Still Enough

By Carol Thornton

My third sister arrives four days before
my fourth birthday. Mom nurses her
through the night, rises early to make breakfast
for our father and the hired man.
She stays up late to finish the mending and
“McAulay’s Essay on Warren Hastings.”

Every afternoon while the babies sleep
she makes Peggy and me lie down with her
on the big bed. We want to be good.

But this morning, under the aspens near the fence
we found a grouse with a clutch of chicks.
There are mouse nests in the machine shed,
and the yard is full of dandelions to pick
and chop and mix with mud to make cookies.
We wriggle and whisper and fidget until
Mom weeps in frustration and fatigue.

We want to be good, we try to be quiet.
But we never will be quite still enough.

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Copyright © Carol Thornton

Carol Thornton is co-author of Writer on Fire: Poetry Prompts to Ignite the Poet Within. She studied Creative Writing at Oxford and was granted an MA from the University of East Anglia. Her poetry and short stories have been published in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, England, Ireland, the USA and Romania (in translation), and won several competitions. A radio play was broadcast on CBC Radio. She lives and works in Canmore.

Fresh Voices is a publication and workshop program created by and for the League’s associate members, curated and edited by Erin Vance.

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