by Jane Munro

The clutter and clatter
of what I drag
along behind me—a dilapidated cart
rocking on its wooden wheels
over roots
and rubble on a track
through second-growth alder, wind-bent spruce,
past trail-side mounds of sharp-edged grass
habituated to salt air,
splay of knotted ropes
pulling chairs, bedsteads, tables, hutches,
even an overflowing Turkish han—market and caravansary—
like a tottering museum piece, oozing smoke, spilling
tears and grain and silk-wrapped books, stinking
of saddles and piss-pots in its corners
and, trailing after this rattletrap,
the silent child
with her kites of longing, their shard-coated cords
slicing each other, paper fishes
drifting off to clouds—no wonder
it takes such energy
to get going:
can I not
emerge from the past’s brown days, leave them
dropped here, to decay
with toppled trees and fallen branches, overtaken
by salal and coated with moss, and walk
quietly and freely on my way?

Jane Munro’s fourth poetry collection, Point No Point, was published in 2006 by McClelland & Stewart. Her previous books include Grief Notes & Animal Dreams and Daughters, a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. She is the winner of the 2007 Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award.