“Tricks of Air Over Water” by Anthony Purdy
Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Tricks of Air Over Water” by Anthony Purdy, part of the League’s Fresh Voices program.
Tricks of Air Over Water
By Anthony Purdy
Their voices carry clear across the pond,
defy the gravity of what they say.
Three fields away
you can hear every measured word
of their hushed exchange –
articulated intimacy,
shared only with sheep and crows,
now rendered public
through a trick of air over water.
You feel ashamed to catch yourself
eavesdropping
on words achieved at such cost.
Stories your mother told
come back to you
about how, high above the ground,
when the balloon’s burners cut
to sudden silence,
the only sound that carries
is the barking of dogs.
Today their voices are your dogs,
your burners the snorting of deer
in the bracken,
as they help themselves
untroubled
to late season apples.
Already the goldenrod has faded.
Copyright © Anthony Purdy
Anthony Purdy lives on the South Shore of Nova Scotia with his partner and two dogs. He has been writing stories and poems for about four years, and his work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Antigonish Review, Contemporary Verse 2, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, FreeFall, Fresh Voices, The Goose, Grain, Poem in Your Pocket, Poetry Pause, Prairie Fire, and Queen’s Quarterly. His poem “Mariupol” won the 2022 Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia Postcard Poem Contest. His story “Spoons” placed second in the 2022 Short Grain Fiction Contest. He recently completed a PK Page mentorship, funded by the League of Canadian Poets, with Margo Wheaton.
Fresh Voices is a publication and workshop program created by and for the League’s associate members.
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