Who’s to say when spring arrives? The crowns
of jays on the deck, a downy woodpecker who mistakes
man-made for natural habitat.
The surprise—a great heron’s flat yellow eye,
sharpened through the lens of your father’s
binoculars (hauled in a black carry-on
across provinces), its feathers navy and slate, jean-
coloured, startling against the river,
the anemic grasses—a pop quiz on
photo-receptivity
after months of white on white, the clouded absence
of spectrum.
Annick MacAskill is the author of No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018), and a chapbook, Brotherly Love: Poems of Sappho and Charaxos
(Frog Hollow Press, 2016). She has new poems forthcoming in Canadian Notes & Queries, Event, The Antigonish Review, Room
Magazine, and The Nova Scotia
Advocate. Originally from Ontario, she currently lives and writes in
Halifax.
