Cinematheque

Cinematheque

Cinematheque 5248 2952 Daniel Cowper

All I really want: to hide between the sheets
of my childhood bed, sleep
until the sun stops coming up.

Could I walk home if I had to,
if things keep getting worse?
Google calculates it’s 90 days

by foot, not counting rests. A ferry
pass waits in my wallet in case
I’m broke when I get back

where waves cough and swallow
in stone-hollows along
the nightbound shore,

where water-walking Orion
and his star-map
mirror sparks from plankton

in the sea.

Rain pops

on the daylit lake. Inflows
oxbow through bulrushes
and bushes of Labrador tea.

Wings shush: three ravens clap
their calls across the lake. Fir boles
catch the ghost sun.

A fawn’s skull yellows
in the creek. One by one,
siskins trickle

from fir to fir.

Is the internal

world a city or wood? I ask myself
that often, walking downhill

the bag-scraped streets
at night where dead leaves bristle
on municipal trees.

Header photograph © Jason D. Ramsey.

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