Burrow

Lee Ellen Pottie

                      for Phillip and Jillian Hall

 
I open the book, flipping pages
like a fan, almost                                              spreading
them – a bound pack of cards
 
watch as the titles, odd or even words
catch my eye, repeating the gesture until
 
I stop on one that calls to me. The title must agree
with my mood or I will flip on                                           waiting
to be intrigued by the message I imagine waits
 
for me. Snow foxes and owls, siblings with
autism, burnt gold wool and a crochet
 
hook, sable and black dog nose, unfold before my mind, my spirit
words, ideas, colours, smells even                                                              oozing
from pages. Each day
 
something just a bit or much different. Unvaccinated
unlimited travel to English gardens in Victoria
 
Pleistocene seas near Indonesia, a Giant sloth at
the Sea-Tac airport[1]                                                                   absconding
to other worlds in words
 
in another human imagination.
This is how
 
I burrow into poetry.

Note: [1]Pleistocene seas and the Giant sloth are thanks to Joanna Lilley’s Endlings

Lee Ellen Pottie is a self-employed editor and writer; a sessional English professor at UPEI, Charlottetown, Canada; and an amateur photographer and painter. Lee Ellen has published two chapbooks, the latest worthless with The Alfred Gustav Press in Vancouver; this is her second publication by Old Water Rat Publishing in Burrow. She was born in Halifax, grew up there and in Montreal, Fredericton, and Windsor, and continues to grow in PEI, where she lives with her husband, writer Richard Lemm, and their dogs, Théo, named for Vincent’s brother, and Siena.

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