Dear Everyone:
I am sharing this poem by top Canadian poet
Don McKay. Don is an award-winning poet.
He has taught at several unviersities and
written several books. He currently resides
in Newfoundland. He often writes on nature.
Astonished p.3
Strike/Slip
Don McKay (2006)
Toronto: McClelland
& Stewart
ASTONISHED
astounded,astonied, astunned, stopped short
and turned toward stone, the moment
filling with its slow
stratified time. Standing there, your face
cratered by its gawk,
you might be the symbol signifying eon.
What are you, empty or pregnant? Somewhere
sediments accumulate on seabeds, seabeds
rear up into mountains, ammonites
fossilize into gems. Are you thinking
or being thought? Cities
as sand dunes, epics
as e-mail. Astonished
you are famous and anonymous, the border
washed out by so soft a thing as weather. Someone
inside you steps from the forest and across the beach
toward the nameless all-dissolving ocean.
Helen.
