Weather Report

By Rhonda Batchelor

Like the shifting and often turbulent skies of our own emotional meteorology, Rhonda Batchelor’s poems forecast the shifting patterns of a marriage from quiet moments of a graceful dawn to stormy seas of absence, from brilliant love-strewn sunshowers to dark moments of loss and bitter nights upon the shore. In three sections, "Backbone of the Moon", "Ghostly Dialogues" and "Still Breathing", Batchelor explores the fleeting forever trilogy of expectations, unions and releases that comprise the tidelike phases of a lover’s cycle. Dedicated to respected Canadian poet Charles Lillard, Batchelor’s late husband, this work keens to the notes of a personal lament but emerges triumphantly healed and ultimately blessed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Apr 16, 2002
• ISBN: 9781770706835

Rhonda Batchelor

Rhonda Batchelor is the author of two collections of poetry, Bearings and Interpreting Silence. She has been anthologized in Windhorse Reader: Choice Poems of 1994, Because You Loved Being a Stranger: 55 Poems Celebrate Patrick Lane, and New Life in Dark Seas: Brick Books 25. She lives in Victoria, BC, and is the manager of The Hawthorne Bookshop. She is also the publisher of Reference West chapbooks.

Book preview

Weather Report

Weather Report

poems by

Rhonda Batchelor

Copyright © 2000 Rhonda Batchelor

First Edition

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage, retrieval and transmission systems now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

This book is published by Beach Holme Publishing, #226—2040 West 12th Ave., Vancouver, BC, V6J 2G2. This is a Porcepic Book.

We acknowledge the financial support

of the Canada Council for the Arts,

the Government of Canada through the

Book Publishing Industry Development

Program (BPIDP) and the assistance of the

Province of British Columbia through the

British Columbia Arts Council for our

publishing activities and program.

Editor: Joy Gugeler

Production and Design: Jen Hamilton

Cover Photographs: Charles Lillard

Author Photograph: Sandy Mayzell

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Batchelor, Rhonda, 1953-

  Weather report

  Poems.

  ISBN 0-88878-408-2

  I. Title.

PS8552.A825W42 2000      C811’.54      C00-910082-2

PR9199.3.B37572W42 2000

For you, Charles

"…where a man arrives as far as he can,

not as far as he wishes."

Contents

Acknowledgements

Vague Happiness

Here to Feed Grace

Under the Overhang

Dunblane

May’s End

Full

Gabriola

Parameters of Grace

Aerial

Blooms Eternal

Backbone of the Moon

Eclipse

Flight Paths

Mercurial

Unemployed Poet

Fight

Weather Report

Old Cat in Spring Sun

Up All Night with the Universe

Leash

January Sestina

Solo

Conqueror

Impossible Desire

Chanson

Prescription

Birthday

Secret Garden

Glad Ghost

Fifth Night

Ciphers

Storm

Pilgrim

Shadow Weather

Visible Contents

Inseparable

Manifest

Equinox

Tryst

Eyes That Mirrored Mine

Spirits

Never Mind the Weather

Mysticus

Covering the Waterfront

Sleeping

Not Sleeping

A Still Part of the Stream

Small Consolation

No Whisky

Signifying Nothing

Lilac

Old-Fashioned Typewriter

Outgoing Message

Black Ice

After

Still Breathing

State of the Union

It’s Late

Impossible

Deep in the Mirror

Leave the Key

Postscript

Mirror After Mirror

Bride

The Rat

Ghost Waving

Strawberries

Tragic

Lament

Widow

What You Left

Good for You

This Morning

Kissing the Ghosts Away

Troubadour

True Romancing

Blackberry

Port of Angels

Blue Leaving

Sitting Alone

Watcher

Healing Game

Remember

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of some of these poems first appeared in ARC, Convolvulus, The Malahat Review, Poetry Canada Review and Prism international. My thanks to the editors. A selection was also published in the chapbook Waiting Game (Reference West, Victoria, 1998). A Project Assistance Grant from the British Columbia Arts Council in 1997 was very much appreciated.

For their help (literary and otherwise), I am grateful to many friends: Patricia Young, Linda Rogers, Anne Kelly, Kerry Slavens, Margaret Blackwood, Liza (E.) Harris, Cathryn Dimock, Ian Callan and the late Robin and