I’m a country girl. It’s hard to grieve in the city.
The buildings are too flat. In the streets
loss flees its reflection in glass, memory
turns to dust in corners, is swept away,
becomes the sad smell in drains, bad dreams.
I’m a country girl. It’s hard to grieve in the city,
no bed of sand or grass to lie down in,
watch the forms of clouds return to formless.
Loss flees its reflection in glass, memory
has a voice too soft to be heard within
the din of traffic, the glare of looks and seems.
I’m a country girl. It’s hard to grieve
without hillsides of bare trees in winter
pale skies above long fallow fields.
Loss flees its reflection in glass, memory
seeks the smoke of brush fires layering
short evenings into ordinary nights.
I’m a country girl. It’s hard to grieve in the city.
Loss flees its reflection in glass, memory…
Dale Matthews’s chapbook, A Puzzle Map of the World, won first place in the Ontario Poetry Society’s 2011 Golden Grassroots Chapbook Contest. Her first book, Wait for the Green Fire, was published by the New Orleans Poetry Journal Press in 2010. She lives in Montreal and works in the Writers in the Community program, a joint venture of the Quebec Writers’ Federation and the Centre for Literacy.
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