The Gathering

Lenora Steele

The wind rolls down the street a rogue
wave and breaks in the maples above. Great swells
crest in the uppermost branches and it is alone a wonder how
the little birds are not
shaken loose from their limbs.

The wind rolls down the street a rogue
wave and breaks in the maples above. Great swells
crest in the uppermost branches and it is alone a wonder how
the little birds are not
shaken loose from their limbs.

Beneath the lilac all is calm. A little hammock-ed
shore, sweet with
blossoms and an ocean of sky full of tides and
tempest. You scull toward an idea that your body
knows but your mind cannot find;

a pelagic bird without shape, it flutters at the margins
of reason and never touches land. A
shearwater spending a lifetime in migrations but
your body is moored to your mind
and all of those small
possibilities that you, yourself, spawned and

harboured. The leaves are turning, thirsting and
the sky has done a figure eight, the white
capped clouds thicken while the
wind hauls back
into her hollows to collect herself in the silence and
wait and all you can do, all you can ever
do, is hold your breath and
try not to drown.

Lenora Steele’s writing has been published in such journals as The Fiddle­headEventThe Antigonish ReviewRoomThe New Quarterly, and Wow. She has won awards from The Hawthorne Society (Victoria, B.C.) and Amnesty Int’l. Her first full-length play garnered a spot at the Banff Theatre Colony in 2009. She lives in Truro, Nova Scotia.

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