At last the fidelity of things opens our eyes
Zbigniew Herbert
Once my sister was sick. So much had happened to her body
over which she had no say; it lay dormant in her sinew for years.
But then, the aftershock –
I sat beside her when they slipped her body into the MRI.
I wanted to hold her, but couldn’t, so I prayed
as though I was a bargain-hunting pauper willing to trade up
glass beads and feathers, something as useless as my life,
for her safety. As though a prayer could be anything
other than a plover’s nest in marram grass, vulnerable
to what is always devastatingly unknown.
That night driving in Saskatoon, she didn’t believe
the moon could look like it did, so I drove her to the edge of the city’s halo.
Hemmed in by wheat and barley, glow of a bare bulb in the root-cellar
of August dusk, we hung our heads out the car windows
into cricket hum. Stars and there it was –
moon, a cupped palm, sallow,
and ready to receive.