Grief’s Language
By Tammy Armstrong
Even this early
April’s a slipknot
a slow sail of shadow
darkening the distance
where fallstreaks
fissure the sky’s late blue light.
Out in the folded fields that are not fields now
but vasts of shivering water
deer, gut-sick with madstones
browse at the traces of
at the edges of
things, wet-sided.
I am so tired
of being cold
the near-thaw like translucence
the air like pin bones.
I wish I were there
or there
or there
but here:
this stupefied, spoilt season
fusting its root-rusted breath
its wild water reek
refuses to bring the wintering home
hang heat in the garden centres’ Polytunnels—
their bedding plants
just hints still
of busy lizzies and begonias
beneath lazy strings of light.
*
This afternoon, my mother made arrangements
to bring my stepfather’s ashes to the cemetery in July.
There are special forms needed for carrying ashes across borders.
The funeral home, she believes, has been notified.
All this weather between us.
Grey river-folds like mackerel spill.
And then more rain.
*
In Chablis, I say, to say something to her
it’s the time of bud break.
Farmers have set thousands of small fires
scattering the vineyards
with crop candles, smudge pots
smouldering bales of hay and straw
to ward off the dead-fast air.
Imagine, thousands of small flames, I say
their deep hearts shearing
the killing frost
across that Kimmeridgean marl
the farmers call
goût de pierre à fusil:
soil tasting of gunflint.
*
Such a strange, such an unsettling place to be:
a bad weather mind in delay
made and unmade—
the part that looks after the breathing and beating
somehow left behind
and us made ash, made smoke-headed
unstilled by the fall out
the unspoken veers
missing the right words to say
If this, then what?
*
My mother keeps finding
things now
as though her house belongs to a gathering ghost.
Who gave us this hat? These blue slotted spoons?
This cheap tin heart?
A milagro, I say, from Chimayó.
I bought it some years ago
outside El Santuario
where they gather the holy dirt
and the desert trees shade pilgrims
with blooms like goats’ singing tongues.
She holds it against the kitchen window
while chickadees at their suet cage
hang in the hum of waiting weather.
Okay, she says. Let’s keep it.
So we both watch
one more beautiful, unfinished trick:
the heart’s hammered tin
suddenly meaningful
sparking, speaking over each of us
before settling back
into the day’s dull rain-light.
Tammy Lynn Armstrong is a Canadian poet and novelist She is most noted for her 2002 collection Bogman's Music, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry at the 2002 Governor General's Awards.
Originally from St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Armstrong was educated at the University of British Columbia and the University of New Brunswick.
Armstrong has published the poetry collections Unravel (2004), Take Us Quietly (2006) and The Scare in the Crow (2010), and the novels Translations: Aístreann (2002) and Pye-Dogs (2008). In 2017, Armstrong's Hermit God Spot made the longlist for the CBC Poetry Prize.
Want to enter one of our prizes?
If you’re a writer, poet, academic, playwright or visual artist, then why not consider entering one of our prizes based on the theme? There are cash prizes and you’ll be invited to attend our 2023 symposium. To find out more click the link below.