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    Narrow Cradle
    Narrow Cradle
    Narrow Cradle
    Ebook113 pages43 minutes

    Narrow Cradle

    By Wade Kearley

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    About this ebook

    **SHORTLISTED FOR THE MIRAMICHI READER'S 'THE VERY BEST!' POETRY AWARD**
    In Narrow Cradle, Wade Kearley explores the midlife encounter with mortality and the ways we strive to resist, deny, cheat, and even bargain with it. Grounded in both traditional and modern poetic forms, these poems find in the transience of life a new kind of freedom, a rebirth independent of personal circumstance. In crisp, direct, and vivid language—swerving between sonnet, villanelle, and sestina—Kearley offers a compelling collection by turns vicious, lost, ragged, and regal.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBreakwater Books
    Release dateApr 17, 2020
    ISBN9781550818161
    Narrow Cradle
    Author

    Wade Kearley

    Wade Kearley is the author of seven books, including the poetry collections Drawing on Water and Let Me Burn like This, and the travel books The People’s Road and The People’s Road Revisited, based on his 900-kilometer trek along Newfoundland’s abandoned rail line. He lives in St. John’s.

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      Book preview

      Narrow Cradle - Wade Kearley

      December on Lawlor’s Brook

      Hide your face from blame, cover your wrists,

      Your scars accuse me of your bloodletting.

      At this dark solstice I recall dandelion twists,

      Cicada hopscotch, dancing, you forgetting

      Breakfast to linger feline in the grass.

      Found, a four-leaf clover, the lucky luck,

      Then skipping past the corner boy’s passes,

      To Mrs. Burry’s stoop. Trade for a quarter.

      I blame you, hiding behind sad clown eyes

      That innocence and beauty, making me despise

      What you’ve become. And yet, what could you do

      But hold the constant blade that routs your demons?

      My calls to heal yourself are empty sermons

      Designed to hide my fatal fear of loving you.

      —bar-headed geese

      On a winter migration out of the Himalayas,

      After drinking a free rye or two too many,

      I am beating my way past screen-flickered faces

      when the seatbelt signs blink and the floor falls away.

      My shoulder collides with an overhead bin and I sprawl

      into your lap. You question how I knew you were lonely.

      With the pain in my arm, I ignore your smirk,

      take the seat beside you, signal for another drink.

      I confess to you that, After six months at an ashram,

      I ran out of patience. Now I just want to get home.

      A slight nod and you turn to the window, the setting sun,

      point to a wavering line of geese winging their way

      on a river of air through mountains that prowl the sky.

      You turn green eyes on me, indulge in a yawn, and manage,

      How is it that up here. . . where it takes ten breaths. . .

      to equal one on the ocean. . . these geese can still fly?

      I wave the drink away and, after you glide into sleep,

      clutch at the headrest, struggle to rise to my feet.

      —rue

      If self is a location, so is love

      Seamus Heaney

      With hours to kill before my snowbound flight, I watch the same street from the same cafe where, outbound, was it just six months ago? I last saw you, my daughter. Time falls away and I am there again. Gazing down at the sidewalk three storeys below the rim of my cup, I see a minstrel plunk a black box on the concrete near the corner of Peel and Sainte-Catherine. She crouches briefly to plug in her guitar as the human flood eddies. She sets her top hat down to catch donations, then flicks back matted hair to stare skyward. As she strums, her body starts to sway. People stand in a small knot around her, some toss coins or tuck bills into the hat. Up here I keep my change. The murmur of travellers and the clink of cups calms me into believing I belong.

      I tell myself I travel light, My suitcase holds no regret. But then up the sidewalk you come dancing in time with the musician who opens her arms for your embrace. You scoop her collection into your purse and pull her hat over your head. I stand at the window, knock the glass with flat hands, upsetting the coffee

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