“Strawberries” by Catherine Graham
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Strawberries” by Catherine Graham.
Strawberries
By Catherine Graham
No god smiles on sidewalk cracks around the quarry.
Only fossils like moles and freckles can shape a face
from rock. Tattoo curves are permanent.
Let my touch slip time between these wild strawberries
I picked for him in the goldenrod field.
Plump-ripe heads drank the sun into reddening.
Donโt stuff so many in your mouth. But who
can resist? As poppies in a field, these fairy
berries are a crop of how much I love my father.
My tongue can move no language for that.
So I pick wild berries to soften the loss;
the one we no longer have; the dead red hue
that lives in the living-room silence.
I filled a whole thimble, right to the tip
of my thumb where her thumb used to sit
like a head in a hat, safe from needles.
The sewing is silent in her nook.
Clothes are store bought now. No hands
like hers. A thimbleโs just a silver container.
Copyright ยฉ Catherine Graham
Previously published in Her Red Hair Rises with the Wings of Insects (Wolsak and Wynn, 2013).
Catherine Grahamโs book รther: An Out-of-Body Lyric was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, Toronto Book Award, and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. Published internationally, her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize and appear in Best Canadian Poetry. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend Weโre Dead: New and Selected Poems is her latest book. Her next collection appears in 2027.
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