When I Looked Up a poem by Sharon Irvine

 

When I Looked Up

 

 

The scene belonged in a Lampman poem:



unfocused lavender hills,

the lake, silvered by winter vapour,  

a still white disc,

the reassuring crunch of snow under my boot.

 

Cedar lace against the dazzle of snow;

the branch broken in my hand,

the pungent odour of northern bush released

a slipstream of memory: canoes, the quavering solo of the loon,

snapping red pine fires, the endless light shows against black velvet,

the rough touch of spruce, the silky fragility of birch.

And always the rocks, unyielding permanence,

founding us,

in place

 in memory.

 

When I looked up,

each branch of the birch was etched against the sky;

along each branch a ghostly shadow

of infinitely delicate snow feathers

like arrows in a quiver.

 

Over all, the benediction of stillness.