Torch River

By Elizabeth Phillips

Winner, Lesbian Poetry at the 2008 GCLS Literary Awards (Golden Crown Literary Awards) and nominated for LGBT Poetry at the Lambda Literary Awards

Shortlisted for the 2007 Anne Szumigalsi Award for Poetry and the 2007 Saskatoon Book Award (Saskatchewan Book Awards) and longlisted for the 2008 ReLit Awards

In this stunning new collection, Elizabeth Philips takes us down into the swirling core of planetary energies, the central mystery of life itself. Sexual love, the wilderness, the births and deaths that connect them, the breathing and the not-breathing that connect birth and death, the interior wilderness of desire and the sensual love of wild things, of trees, earth, water -- these are Philips's themes and subjects, rendered in a language of tremendous immediateness and authority. These are poems that will take your own breath away, that will give it back to you bigger, deeper than you imagined possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Oct 15, 2007
• ISBN: 9781771310246

Elizabeth Phillips

Elizabeth Philips is the author of three previous collections of poetry, most recently A Blue with Blood in it and Beyond my Keeping. Both collections received the Saskatchewan Poetry Award for their respective years. She has edited numerous poetry collections and has taught creative writing in the Banff Wired Studio, the Banff Writing with Style program, and the Sage Hill Writing Experience. She edited the literary magazine Grain from 1998 to 2003. She lives in Saskatoon.

Book preview

TORCH

RIVER

TORCH

RIVER

ELIZABETH

PHILIPS

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Philips, Elizabeth

       Torch River / Elizabeth Philips.

Poems.

ISBN-13: 978-1-894078-57-3

ISBN-10: 1-894078-57-8

I. Title.

PS8581.H545T67 2007            C811’.54            C2006-906535-7

Copyright © Elizabeth Philips, 2007

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of

Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program

(BPIDP), the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Ontario Arts Council

for their support of our publishing program.

Cover photograph by Elizabeth Philips.

Author photograph by Doris Wall Larson.

Brick Books

Box 20081

431 Boler Road

London, Ontario

N6K 4G6

Canada

www.brickbooks.ca

for D. and J.

It isn’t such a bad thing,

to live in one world forever.

           —James Galvin

Contents

Breath

PART ONE

Before

Lake Aubade

Jackknife/1

Harbour

Jackknife/2

Stormy Weather

Reprise

PART TWO

The Hanging Tree

Nocturne

Drift

The Hall Closet

Jackknife/3

Double Dare

To Keats

PART THREE

Lullaby

Belief

The Promise

The Widow

Fatherhood

The First Hours

Night

Day

2:41 p.m.

3:15 p.m.

Song to the Areola

Out

Below

The Waiting Room

PART FOUR

Prelude

Passage

Oxbow

Sunday

Late Storm

River Edge

Torch River

Acknowledgements

Biography

Breath

Who’s to say this life isn’t the eternal life?

The no-time, the hover between in-and

exhale—both wellspring

and spur—is the source of the extra strength

you use to loosen the screw that holds down

everything,

                     or this morning, the heft I need

to shuttle from boulder to boulder

over the slump of rock meant to keep the riverbank

from moving.

                       Each day, small increments,

ratchetings of the essential force

are summoned up

from nowhere:

                       that pause, before the expulsion

of breath, is the pivot you turn on

when you turn and walk away, saying

nothing, not giving them

the satisfaction.

                        It’s that little catch, of pleasure

or release, when I first glimpse the river

each morning, the river that never pauses, not

in its meander or undertow, the light

breaking apart the sky and reassembling it

                                                 beyond

the wide, flat rock we call

Pelican Rock.

                     As you can see

one sits there now, absurdly large,

unimaginable. Her lower jawbone, wire

thin, lifts the vast skin of her pouch, gullet

cum fishnet, at this moment empty.

                                                        What was I saying?

Something about the caesura, the stillness that isn’t

the gathering in

                           or the letting go.

                                                    A thought

so slippery it flits away, following my glance

into the water, where I imagine it

                                                taking shape,

fish-like, exploring the grooved and rolling

river bottom, becoming more

detailed, clearer

                              as the bird looks—

or so it seems—my way.

And now I wait on shore: whatever I was thinking

is out there and will be recaptured, returned, or

vanish,

           diluted by the massive flow, the irresistible

on-goingness,

                    in this instance what we call

the South Saskatchewan.

                                       What’s everlasting must be—

do you think?—that instant that is neither

in nor out, when you do not breathe

but rest, at the point of turnaround, full

stop,

              infinitesimal yet loaded, densely

particulate, containing every thought

you’ve ever had—

                                  had and lost

—until now.

              Until the bird slowly opens

her great wings and strokes the air, three

long beats, and she is airborne, rowing

with ponderous grace

downstream.

                                  Who’s to say

this life is