Issue 57: Spring 2022

Make Good

How do you intend/ It to end the road its roar

 

How do you intend
                                     It to end the road its roar
To nowhere the habitual
                                     Leaving we revisit once
A long age thaws
                                     Solid in our forgetting

Did you return
                                     To make good
On your boyhood instinct
                                     Playing animal, uncanny
The southern blur
                                     At the train’s terminal gate

How does it begin
                                     I know not
To listen to the city
                                     Braided in light
The second step
                                     A heavy familiar

How much time
                                     Before I guess
Myself back
                                     Into that world
Saying
                                     I am not
Afraid—

                                     You first

About the author

Patrick Grace is a writer living on Coast Salish lands. His work has been featured in recent issues of The FiddleheadThe Malahat Review, and EVENT. His poem "The Big Dark," originally published in Prairie Fire, will appear in Best Canadian Poetry 2022. Anstruther Press published his first chapbook, Dastardly, late last year.