Editor's Note: Each day from December 1 -21, Halifax' poet laureate Sue Goyette will write a new poem to share with the city on The Coast's website and social media. "If I need this, I bet other people need this," she told us on day one—and we think she's right. In a year that's felt like a months-long dusk, this will be some light we can carry forward, together, until the days begin to grow again.
Here is her poem for December 18:
Here is her poem for December 18:
Consider the pinecone. Imbricated in design much like fish scales. Thin bract scales beneath seed scales. Each seed scale has two ovules; a miniature forest maker. I was tempted to use “factory” but that word has a conveyor belt for a heart and is right now churning out bladed things at an alarming rate and everyone’s working overtime so all those bladed things are made in time and the coffee urn in the corner is an ancient robot spitting its orange light of being ready and there’s never any real sugar but Sweet ‘n Low jammed into a cup and someone has to step from their spot to find the shovel because the door is jammed with snow and this dude, outside in his coveralls, bends to the task and breaths that muffler/scarf combo smell and the pinecone of feelings in his chest greens a little the way pinecones do when there’s enough water and he straightens before he goes in because his back is fucked and that’s when he sees this tree in the empty lot and he swears, and he takes this swearing seriously, he swears that the tree was trying to tell him something.
