Love, fidelity, etc.

Rob Taylor



I do not wear you
when I shower, when I sleep,

when playing sports or making things,
my knuckles thick with dirt or grease,

though I wear you now on the hand
behind my head, which tilts it to the page.

Remember when I lost you
those six months beneath the driver’s seat?

You must have hidden in my pocket—
the one inside the other—

and when I’d wriggled out the keys
you’d ventured too.

Folks think you represent
but we both know you’re

up there in the darkness of my hair,
sometimes waiting in the car.

When I found you we were both Prodigal Fathers,
steadfast without sons, though it was my hand

of course, reached out in welcome,
my mouth that rushed the story to my wife.

Yes, you arrived with my marriage.  You’ll go
at the end, off to some necklace or pouch

or lingering years in the earth
until all you encircle is earth

and some scavenger prospects you,
as I did, from the muck.

It wasn’t much. I was in the field.
I knelt. My hands were bare.



Rob Taylor is the author of three poetry collections, including The News (Gaspereau Press, 2016), which was a finalist for the 2017 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Rob is also the editor of What the Poets Are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation (Nightwood Editions, 2018) and guest editor of the 2019 edition of The Best Canadian Poetry in English (Biblioasis, 2019). In 2015 Rob received the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for the Literary Arts, as an emerging artist. He lives with his family in Port Moody, BC.