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[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

Winter, Back River

It isn't the stream flowing south
I speak to when I stand on the dock,
but my old lowland polders pushing back

the sea — another winter to hold
the skates I strapped on.
Ice, little fires and chocolate

before I was shooed home to vanish
and reappear at court.
The Queen of Belgium from the Lunar

Sea of Bruges singles me out for
travel through time
on the back of a swan.

We stumble on the country
of Marie-sur-la-Lune
and her self-important rabbit.

Now I'm a traveller to the Southland,
far from North Sea snow and porridge.
When I peer through mist, Mary Mother's

light favors the rice mill at Pine Grove,
and a rabbit sitting for its portrait.
What I look at is not what I see —

a map of childhood's meanders unfolds,
and of this silvery back river,
the rise and fall of the tide.

Colette Inez
Hotel Amerika
Premier Issue
Volume 1, Number 1
Fall 2002