Pearl Pirie

hurry-up-and-wait’s a handy tourniqueted phrase

10x more moose seen on polar fleece in a day
than I will ever see in life.

a vibration, glass against glass. gradual shift into contact?
or a truck has struck our building?

it comes without a drought,
the earthquake we waited from birth for.

       yet Yangze’s flood, yet Aultsville, Dickinson's Landing,
       Farran's Point, Maple Grove, Mille Roches, Moulinette,
       yet Santa Cruz, Sheek's Island, Wales, and Woodlands*,
       yet slash and burn, yet cutting firewood, yet export, yet
       900 square miles more per year of desert in China yet
       tens of thousands of square kms of James Bay Project

and Eeyou Istchee. yet we make deals with our disasters.
hide them as a dog-dig after a squat, off at a trot.

water in flat circles drawn by fingertips on arborite
dries, leaves only what was before. a table

       is not a water table, is not a dripping tap, is not an upending
       is not a relativity caught in 22 depending, is not an industrial
       cap on pollution that may impact consumer-end pricing
       is not the simple habit of being a bother, of calling
       of emailing, of talking priorities to MP until blue in this case
       yet progress? point made yet to the indifferent friends?

is it for the sins of our overdesire, underdiscrimation
that Lionel Rithie’s Say You, Say Me plays over the cashier?


(*the villages that were flooded to make the St. Laurence Seaway Project)



counting your toes backwards

in Chinese I arrive at yī with one
toe to go. cheeks pinch red. what did I miss?
let's not mistake this  for a spontaneous
growth. a sidelong glance for the lines or space
to the sides  of your eyes to surmise what
you've caught. words, or only the fond squeezes?
you are slack-necked, calm receiving. I give
your wee-est piggie its definitive
name, líng, with a peck, a thanks for the safe
bays between these shaggy dedos of home.