Curated by Judy Gaudet
Once Upon an Island
I used to stand on the deck of a ferry
in summertime watching waves shatter spray
on the hull
and the wheeling gulls.
The wind knotted my hair, salt air
made my eyes tear.
And in winter, the Abegweit crept
through ice prison-wall thick
forward and back
like a convict tunneling blind
with a teaspoon.
And the one time, on the business end
of an eighteen hour Ottawa haul,
I saw a fox skipping cracks the bow opened
ahead,
flashing its tail.
—Zach Wells from Fool’s Errand, Saturday Morning Chapbooks, 2004. Recent books by Zach include SUM and Track & Trace, both from Biblioasis.
Island poet and avid poetry reader Judy Gaudet selects a poem by a PEI poet each month.
Judy's latest book is Conversation with Crows (Oberon,2014)