Belonging (an excerpt)

a pillow for my daughter

and a farm under each leg

to sup nightly on dreams of

fields in Quebec whose clean lines

are a well-practised penmanship.

sweat blond hay slicked back

for picture day, you know the cows

are happy, the cheese is rich

and there’s no rust in the buckets.

something to be said for

doing the same ol’ thing well,

take Le Ciel de Charlevoix

or rounds of Le Baluchon —

the earth and its chewed cud

with the taint of human hands,

are brought together in the

alchemistry of a bite;

we are pulled by the nose

with the string of our senses

back to a place of belonging.

this world mapped in earthy tones

is what I would give to my daughters —

a sensorial GPS of the soul, complete with

birds in the sky aligning into a V

pointing the direction home.