Editor’s Note: Each day from December 1 -21, Halifax’ poet laureate Sue Goyette will write a new poem to share with the city on The Coast’s website and social media. “If I need this, I bet other people need this,” she told us on day one—and we think she’s right. In a year that’s felt like a months-long dusk, this will be some light we can carry forward, together, until the days begin to grow again.
Here is her poem for December 10:
The Atlantic, a boat, some gulls, a tableau here but yesterday: idk, some kind of something. The boat was blue, heading to shore. The ocean, December’s cold reverie: a slick sheen of whale dream or crustacean sass. You know? All coming for you snapping, then: retreat, retreat, retreat. The moment I saved for you was how the gulls hovered aloft as if the air had thickened to hold them in place; the boat with its swag of going home that isn’t deliberate as much as it’s easy, sure of its welcome (oh, a new ache). What I wanted to tell you was how the gulls were held aloft above the boat like an aerial exhaust of bird-knot lace or a sophisticated mobile of contraptions with wings. And how every once in a while the sun would use them to mirror itself and they’d transform into this miraculous beacon of bright. That’s when I thought of you, of us, and how we’re occasionally okay. And how when we share the shine we’re even brighter.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2020.
