newfall of snow
~
~
newfall: words escape me
~
the white ephemeral
perhaps frost
the fir boughs divided
the sculptured steel
of a flake of snow
~
try again
~
paper stencil
on chocolate cake
powdered sugar
sifted on the rills
of the new plowed field
~
again
~
sweet in my mouth
the bitter melted in morning sun
white hot on my cheek
the writing lamp
~
a lamp to the left
casts no shadow
(the shadow of a pen
or a hand)
~
(unless you are wrong-handed)
~
chimney shadow
on a fresh-snowed roof
or trees on the eastern edge of the road
where the sun cannot warm
~
the morning
dusting of ice
~
try again
~
~
~
Published as ‘newfall: words escape me’, The Fiddlehead 196, Summer 1998.
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
abandoned meeting house
~
~
the meeting house
~
~
crooked clapboards
doors nailed shut
remember
~
they argued
into the supper hour
words threaded, knotted
~
violent voices
eyes wool, ears cotton, lips
flax flayed to linen
~
over wages paid
to the man who splits
the wood, stokes the fire
~
at home, needles
slid, silent, through layers
of quilting
~
women forgot their thimbles
pricked thumbs
left blood on fabric
~
~
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
November first frost
~
November first frost
~
air brittle, a broken
sliver of moon between
disrobing larches, silence
ruptured by craven’s cry
~
~
~
© Jane Tims 1995
crows too
~
~
Grim Women
~
1.
~
the crows burden the trees
gather their iron grits
criticize one another
~
they slip through gaps
in the matrix
and are gone
~
their wings are bruises
on the afternoon
~
their wind is deliberate
and desperate
hardened to the goal
~
2.
~
in black
grim women
watch one-another
hide the key
beneath the doormat
and glide
towards the town
~
~
Published as ‘Grim Women’, Women & Environments International Magazine (WEIM) No 86/87 Spring/Summer, 2011, p 8
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
~
October moon
~
~
moon escape
~
above the woods
in sunset’s dying
the moon rose –
orange
and terrifying
~
caught in the trees
with the night wind’s sighing
drowned in the lake mists –
mystifying
~
captured in the yellow
of a barn owl’s eye
escaping on a wild bird’s
flight to the sky
~
a pool of light
where the hounds are lying
ghosts on the line
where the shirts are drying
~
a silhouette
for a coyote’s cry
~
~
Sunpoke Lake, October 2011
~
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
campfire
I love a campfire. If you visit our property, you would know this because there is a fire pit for every occasion.
~
December 26, 2011, ‘watching the fire’, Jane Tims
~
We have a stone fireplace, made from big granite cobbles, for serious fires. We have a chiminea on the back deck, perfect for a quick fire in spring or summer. And now I have a metal fire pit on the front lawn.
~
first fire in my metal fire pit – leaves and wood wet after yesterday’s rain
~
Fire is insubstantial yet so powerful. It can be dangerous but soothing. When I sit in front of a fire, watching the flames, I feel I am sharing community with every person who has ever tended a campfire.
~
a summer campfire during a visit with family and friends
~
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – Rough Bedstraw
~
~
Rough Bedstraw
Gallium asprellum Michx.
~
along the sleepy river
green shoreline, plumped and pillowed
rough bedstraw, river trick
~
river and shoreline beckon
you to bed down, settle down
get a little shut-eye, tough
stuff bedstraw, mattress thick
~
shoreline a bedroom, rough
bedstraw, green mattress, blue sky
bedspread, blue river tick
~
~
orchard along the Saint John River
~
Published as ‘Rough Bedstraw, Canadian Stories 17 (99),October/November 2014
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – Sea Lavender
~
Sea Lavender, picked long ago and woven into a wreath
~
~
Sea Lavender
Limonium Nashii Small.
1.
bunch of lavender, dry
picked at the edge
of the sea
2.
at high tide, overcome
by salt water, linear
leaves buffeted
as rags, tattered purple papers
echoed in oil-slick
mirrors of foam
3.
on-shore breeze, stiff
sprays of Sea Lavender
tremble
~
~
Published as ‘Sea Lavender’, Canadian Stories 17 (99),October/November 2014
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
dry Sea Lavender
harvesting colour – drop spin
~
drop spindle
~
spin turned maple between
fingers, draft roving to
the texture of cobweb
the wool ravels, the twist
travels the line to the pinch
of thumb and forefinger
fibres teased to almost
breaking, then spun strong
~
park and draft, and colour thickens
energy builds, the spindle
muddles air and the twist
travels between hand and whorl
where fibres embrace one
another, fatten the cop
build a kitten-worthy
ball of yarn
~
~
Previously published as ‘drop spindle’ Canadian Stories 17 (99),October/November 2014
Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
~
~
crossing the brook
Of all kinds of waterways, I certainly love a brook the best.
~
~
When I was a child, I spent many summer hours playing in the brook at my mother’s ‘old home place’. The brook was in a small wooded valley between farms. The woods around the brook were always cool and shady, especially on a hot summer day.
~
Building stone causeways in the brook was one of my favorite pastimes. I would find flat stones and place them like stepping stones. Then, once the stones were in place, I would plant them with mosses.
~
I haven’t returned to the brook for many years, but I like to think you could still find the grey and green remnants of my causeways at intervals along the brook!
~
a brook in south-west New Brunswick with its own stepping stones
~
construction of moss and stone
~
in the valley between farms
a brook needs crossing
a freshet-proof ford
lattice-work built
of slate, grey stepping
stones, packed and decked with
moss, hydrophilic flourish
~
~
© Jane Tims 2014
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