Issue 3.3

A Wednesday in February *Upon the Coteau des Prairies* Word came late over snow-clotted roads that my friends had died, far from here, far from this white forbiddance. In this place of debt and remittance, of bone and hide half-buried in the fields, where the tops of fences read like Braille and the once keen edge of the horizon is no more than a formless chill that filters through the shelter belts as finger drifts, the dogs lost to the blizzard still shred on their lamp posts and what moves are memories that rip through me as hail. I lean on my shovel. Down at the end of the driveway, my car is a welt in the snow bandaged by the plow. The clear streets beyond are slick, they glisten in streaks, and I think, if I dig long enough, far enough, I may find them again: my friends. But most times, those dogs lost to the blizzard never return.

This Wandering Hush It’s called a murmur. And just as the first bird turns, so too the flock smudged upon the sky unfolds, darkens and dives, masses and bursts in blooms no wind on all the earth can pry from a bud nailed to a stalk. Starling, take dusk as your own, for no garden will leap from a dim afternoon to the cusp of a lake, nor fury the mind to its wondrous sleep. Starling, since neither rose nor lily may conjure as smoke all the shapes of the world— the creases of loss, of cities come and gone, the mute passage of form upon form—you blaze in the eye while all of a life unfurls like a minute of grace in a darkening dawn.

Pigeon Flying The birds stir on their terrace loft. Their cooing wakes me up, cutting out the friction of cars on the tarmac below. The browns are inherited from Grandpa who broke his thumb in college and stayed home. The greys are fat with neglect and trip during ascent. I stole money for their feed from my mother's purse. The speckled ones are new: still sore and stiff—fly only if nudged. Father set the TV volume loud all day, every day. My neighbour-turned-therapist says: *Let it all go.* I unlatch the coop and with meditative flaps, they overcome the sky. I sit on the terrace edge retracing their flight until the sun perches on the horizon and the clouds turn rowdy—they all flutter back like a panic attack. Each of my pigeons is a racing homer; fear always finds its way back home.

I Learn to Count My father’s hands were so big he could hold four eggs in each one. One by one, then by twos as my hands grew, I placed the eggs into the yellow wire basket, gently, finding the lowest spot— otherwise they would roll down, smack against each other. If a hen was fluffed on the nest, I would pull my sleeve over my hand, sneak toward her back end. Under the hot feathers— a gathering of round, warm treasure— ...seventy-eight, seventy-nine. We counted close to a hundred eggs, but we stayed in a trance of now, each egg, each nest a moment— slow dance of harvest, heavy miracle— the basket filled.

The Night Egg *From Aristophanes*, Birds, *ll. 694-97* First in the shapeless evergoing lap of Darkness Nyx @tabthe Night @tab@tabof the great black wing bore an egg: @taban egg of wind: @tab@taba yolkless ovum. After many turns of time had swung around, @tab@tab@tab@tab@tab@tabout from it comes hatching @tabEros @tab@tabdrenched in hungry yearning, flashing golden wings at his back: rushing as any wind: @tab@tab@tab@tab@tablike any vortex.