Honey and Old Things
Dorothy Wayne Russell
"Honey and old things" read the farmhouse sign
where wheat grew right up to a red table
and the jars where sun, but not for me;
I kept driving. Saskatchewan was a carpet even the glaciers had swept through
and I was eons late following them,
looking for terrain that would make something
of itself, a horizon that could break
free from its own foothills. I wanted mountains,
and Alberta’s were as brash as opera
stars. Draped in purple, they wore flowers tossed
at their feet and they stole the light, and in
those days, a sky for shadows and granite
was fair trade. But no more. It’s no enough
that I’ve overtaken the ice and seen
mist rise between its stone shoulders.
I need sun. Besides, I know what to do
with a prairie now; I’ve learned how to love
a place that will surrender everything
but the light Van Gogh could have lived for.
Out here light is nectar, you drink it down,
you look in the eye of the dawn,
you pretend you’re out on the sea,
you sit at the red table.
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