POETRY: E. MARTIN NOLAN

A LIFE
 
“What we are engaged in when we do poetry is error,
the wilful creation of error.”
-Anne Carson
 
1
 
when we call error what we gain by
does error become idol
we give our last idle guilt
a question overwhelmed by
what error half billion animals
in the bushfires and by
quick overwhelm correction
conservative estimate a billion
 
2
 
Condors trace California highways
for coastal roadkill, enough to replace
 
the megafauna. Our errors of transit
replace an ancient diet. Our error
 
is nature. Round goby in the middle
of the Great Lakes food web,
 
like strangers where your family was.
Like a cormorant, you make a life of it.
 
3
 
the answer you arrive at impasse
something new constant whiplash
 
4
 
Days rain in January,
hardly got my big coat out.
 
Days rain in January,
ten-foot snowfall, were it cold.
 
Days rain in January,
sirens chasing, didn’t hold.
 
Days rain in January,
standing still is a route.
 
5
 
The leaves of some mass produced flowering plant
look alive in all the gardens on my block. They are flat
against the half-frozen earth, failing to wilt.
 
A child calls her mom back to see a wet pile
protected in a hedge’s shadow. “I found snow! Snow!”
She is pointing at it, hopping. In my opinion, it is ugly.
It melts as if rotting, greying from within. Soaked dry
with soot. The child is better at hope than me.

E Martin Nolan is a poet, essayist, editor and teacher. His first book of poems, Still Point, was published with Invisible Publishing in Fall, 2017. He teaches in the Engineering Communication Program at the University of Toronto and is a PhD Candidate in Applied Linguistics at York University. More at emartinnolan.com