Beneath our line of sight, pink plastic
cast cold and tacky against the ruffles
of the white oak’s trunk. A door
for the unseen, an offering
shaped by children, our archaic
superstitions huffed hot in the soft
seashells of their ears. They say
lost gnomes might make their homes here.
Merciful, the fantasy, but foolish too—
another pandemic pastime
to jam in the cracks of our blunt prattle—
instructions proffered by local libraries,
news outlets, innumerable
Google searches. I swear I never saw them
in the bright haze of our before,
though as a girl I had Polly Pockets,
a powder blue dollhouse built by my mother,
countless Barbies, and Tinkerbell,
all lessons in the femininity
I couldn’t care to imitate.
And I think first of these,
not of Celtic myth or Mi’kmaw lore—
something about the petroleum products,
their colour, the guts of earth
hardened and shiny
in this enduring form—
how to trust in a fairy world
that would enter such a scene,
settle in the chubby chairs,
sip from the tiny tea sets,
put down all their wickedness,
their perfect shadow genius, to dwell
among cheap bagatelles
scattered through the neighbourhood?
Still, I look for them after the hurricane,
the same way we turn
to the nacreous night, pupils dilating
before the sprawling absence,
searching for Jupiter
and his three moony conquests
on the date they draw the closest
they’ve been to us in decades.
In Fiona’s wake, an aftermath
already wracked by thunder,
the threat of tornado, the news
of neighbours washed away by sea
like lovers in a medieval saga,
an ocean of clouds thickening above,
their edges overlapping like waves
with nothing left to tug away
but the light. The dog pissing
on the corner, my mind flits
to those homes, our rooms
for the unseen, prayers to the absent,
a belief like holding breath
while underwater, and waiting,
waiting.
Annick MacAskill’s books include Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), winner of the Governor General’s Award, and Votive (Gaspereau Press, 2024).