Secrets of Weather & Hope

By Sue Sinclair

Shortlisted for the 2002 Gerald Lampert Award

Sue Sinclair's poems speak from that precise place where our perception of the world and our capacity for language meet and embrace, where our sense of experience goes to get sharpened and refreshed. That experience might involve the inner lives of clouds, the flourishing and passing of a tulip, the evocative scent of wolf willow, or the intricate arts of Bach and Virginia Woolf. These poems are deft, musical, and quick in the moment, alive to the sensuous surface and the meditative depth, their antennae fully extended.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: May 15, 2001
• ISBN: 9781771310635

Sue Sinclair

Sue Sinclair grew up on the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk in Newfoundland and is currently living on Wəlastəkwiyik Territory, where she teaches creative writing at the University of New Brunswick. She is the author of five previous collections of poetry, all nominated for or winners of national or regional awards. Sinclair edits poetry for Brick Books and is also editor of the Fiddlehead.

Book preview

Secrets of Weather & Hope

Sue Sinclair

Secrets of Weather & Hope

Brick Books

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Sinclair, Sue, 1972–

Secrets of weather & hope

Poems.

I. Title. II. Title: Secrets of weather and hope.

ps8587.155278S42 2001 c811'.6 c2001-930377-7

PR 9199.3.S5342S42 2001

Copyright © Sue Sinclair, 2001.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing programme. The support of the Ontario Arts Council is also gratefully acknowledged.

The cover photograph, ‘Torbay Clouds’, is by Peter Sinclair.

Brick Books

www.brickbooks.ca

Box 20081

431 Boler Road

London, Ontario

N6K 4G6

Canada

[e-mail]

For Mum, Dad, and Steve

Contents

Household Effects

The Pitcher

Collar Bones

Green Pepper

Peonies

The Dorsals

In the Bathroom

Navel

The Least Terns

Calcareous

Tulips

A Single Piece of Wood

Red Pepper

Lilies

Upstream

Bone

Galleries

André Kertész

Bach's Concerto for Harpsichord in F Minor

Four Poems for Virginia Woolf

I Portrait

II A Sunday Drive

III Observation

IV The Pattles

Learning the Waltz

Lyric Strain

Stained Glass

Doorways

In the Diner

Orange and Red Streak by Georgia O'Keeffe

Frobisher Bay

Aperture

Toronto Skyline

Trestlework

Clouds

Meteorology

Stratus

Cumulus

Cirrus

Altocumulus Undulatus

Cirrus Radiatus

Thunderhead

Thunderhead II

Orographic Clouds

Contrails

Stratocumulus Undulatus

The Absence of Clouds

The Hours

Mid-Afternoon

Six O'Clock

Seven O'Clock

Eight O'Clock

Café Interior, Night

Twelve O'Clock

Domestic Habits

Naming the Lilies, You Sleep

Saturday Afternoon

Springtime

The Scent of Wolf Willow

March

August

Saskatchewan

Grazing

Heat Effects

Concessions

Departure

Household Effects

The Pitcher

Unafraid of the dangers

of perspective, of distance,

round as a fruit, sure

of its proportions,

it confides in us its secret:

an inch tall, an inch around,

dainty lip and handle

ready to pour.

You want to hold it in your hand

because it fits, and makes you believe

in a place as small and certain

as that, like the way we remember

childhood

       through a keyhole:

our tiny mother,

tiny father, the tiny bed

in which we slept. Did we dream?

We did not. The sun rose

again