William North

She knows beyond a shadow of a doubt it's he hunched between spokes of fire-light, a disciple of jaded spirit begging warmth. Later they'll say this was the way it was prophesied, how he drowned his no in the Sea of Galilee only to have it return in . . . . Continue Reading »

Shuffling through your city of perpetual night, you have come to this Advent eucharist with the help of a seeing-eye dog. You clutch tight the pew back curl of wood expecting neither miracle nor accident to set the sight on fire. I watch you stare as from a cliff ledge, groping for the cinnamon coat . . . . Continue Reading »

From a distance it looked like ordinary wood, a snuff-colored twigone might rake for burning. Surfaced by the bulldozerfrom a sarcophagus of clay, it could have been the brittle finger-bone of a prophet, or aphalange of an extinct ape from another age. Black spruce, the geologist says,buried by the . . . . Continue Reading »

Seven meters an hour, top speed, pulling closer the edge of asphalt you cannotsee. Mizzling rain glistens your body stripped to the skin. You row,row for your life in air thick with whirlpools of danger. I cannot lookat you without suffering your fragility. There reels from the morningsky a piece of . . . . Continue Reading »