Micro-fragments
It’s Earth Day and my daughter
is reading up on oceans. She wants
to quiz me about the floating plastic
continent, but I know little more
than she does. She scrolls to pictures
of gummy squirrels and dumbo
octopuses found in the abyssalpelagic
zone – she stumbles over the word –
the coldest murkiest depths of the sea.
This fine day, we’d been gadding
about, playground to flea market
to library, but now she’s set on saving
the Deepsea Oasis, brings me a petition
I should sign. Of course I do, feeling her
clasp this cause in hands and heart,
such sympathy for these cute clowns:
gummies neon yellow with waving tails,
red bellies, cephalopods with elephant ears.
My mind is still on the trash vortex as I
knuckle tired eyes. Phosphenes spiral
behind my lids and bright circles concatenate,
image lining up behind image, like celestial
bodies in syzygy, or scenes in old musicals
when a sequined showgirl high-steps aside
to reveal, turn by brisk turn, each member
of the chorus in fluid moves down the line.
Micro-fragments dance in the current’s gyre.
Thresholds
At night all cats are grey but so too the fingers
of dawn move grey, caress, strum a warning
sound, a deep bass note of beginning. The dark
in the morning, before light gets a fingergrip.
And the dark yields, the dark notates the dawn
chorus, birds that begin, one note then twelve,
then silence until the day is fully revealed, arriving
to sweep dusty webs away, a banishment of the grey-
garmented, who seem reluctant to go but willing
to be pushed. The break in the dark, a well of inky
space that a bucket cascades through.
I am accustomed to the dark, at least at times.
But the trees grow less distinct on a twilit path,
the rocks, fist-sized lumps protruding from snow
are blotches now, the branches and roots stumble-
traps for my unwary boots. My dog a pale bounding
blur, the crack of twigs as he plows through amplified
to firecracker, gunshot. Ricochet to childhood
evenings, walking home from Brownies, a high wall
of piled snow between street and sidewalk, cliffs
I scale. The yellow kitchen light and warm smells,
meatloaf or macaroni casserole, welcoming
me in from the cold outside air. Threshold
of dark to cross, or hover over.
Photo Credit: Curtis Perry
Frances Boyle (she/her) is a Canadian author, living in Ottawa. Her most recent poetry collections are Openwork and Limestone (2022) and Light-carved Passages (2024). Her other publications include Tower, a novella (2018), Seeking Shade, short stories (2020) and Skin Hunger, a novel (forthcoming 2026). Recent and upcoming publications include work in Glass Poetry, The Fiddlehead, South Dakota Review, The New Quarterly and The Ex-Puritan. Follow her at @francesboyle19 and visit www.francesboyle.com for more.
Fragment Photo by M.Alazia in Unsplash
About the Author
