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From: Vol.01 N.01 – Ecopoetic Ruminations

Feast

by Tim Lilburn

Scrape of moon on maple leaves and

on blue cliff stone,

full moon, so far away as to be the moon

of some future life, bright, gelid glow

around 5:30 am, feast of Therese

(Martin) of Liseux, mother dead at five,

four sisters not making adulthood,

her small, boxed-in, black-wimpled face, that moon, tuberculosis.

The tomatoes we’ve hauled out of the garden

in sacks these last weeks, seven inches, some, across,

none split. Bag after bag.

Cat food sodden in the dish at the back door after rain.

Next night  a demon wind licks through

and in the morning, before dawn,

a giant maple leaf sways just above the deck

in a torn spider web. This is the Feast

of the Guardian Angels, whose mouths

are wound over our minds,

warming individual letters of their alphabet

and ours, which then wake in us and move.

Published: January 2014
Tim Lilburn

is the author of nine books of poetry, including Orphic Politics and Kill-site and two essay collections, Living in the World as if It Were Home and Going Home. He teaches at the University of Victoria, Canada.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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