POETRY: D.A. LOCKHART

OTTO E. ECKERT STATION TAUNTS FIRE TO GRANDMOTHER 
 
She rises through
nitrous oxide sunset
greets the  Boji Tower,
greets it in persimmon
sky, arrives in the fall
of this late burning sun.
 
Before her, coiling bolts
of coal cooked air pour forth
into diminishing  light,
slip and fade in opaque
whisps. One street over
 
in a sapling park, several geese
lament the lost Oldsmobile
plant. What song will rise
to greet the final train load
of Powder River Basin earth,
when it arrives to be cooked
up beneath the Eckert Station’s
unfiltered bundle of shareholder
ambition, pleasure, ambivalence.
 
Landmarks, despite their poison
are missed in the absences before
and behind us, their ends the loss
of measures to our traces left
upon creation. Grandmother rises,
her downward fixed gaze rests
               on the steady tumble
                                                               of coal-fired smoke
                                                                             feeding a hundred-thousand air conditioners.




SWALLOWS RUN FRANTIC AT THE WATER'S EDGE
 
Trace the pathways
of swallows, running
veins atop Waabiishkiigo,
criss-crossing whirlpools
left by minnows,
               stalking the same hatch.
 
Discarded, yellow ash leaves
islands unto themselves
crest and fall on this lake
swollen past temperament
by distant snowfalls,
               creation rising to meet creation
 
Beyond us, northward
our land peters out into
shipping lanes, currents
of sand, algae, driftwood.
Each caress of this lake
               refreshes us, slows us
 
Horizon holds mid-lake
lighthouse, toilet shaped,
blotting out Wheatley beyond.
A lesson that lake freighters,
pleasure boat fishermen,
               ignore in due course.
 
The lake, creation moves
slow. Swallows frantic atop
it, us lazy on this beach,
and the water rises, another
freighter steams past lighthouse
               green moves atop high waves.




MÀXKI SIPU
 
I come to you as you squeeze
into the cement culvert bisecting
the heart of Springwells treaty land
at fence line you stretch out
to the horizons, beneath lowrise
office buildings, straight as a slash
of a shixikwe bite, still, as moments
after the strike. Know your destination
arrives at an island of fire, constant
grumble of angry earth. Above us
shopping cart rapids slow to glass
top rifle of water, wailing past
weeds, nènèskakw  burst skyward
from cracks in constricting shore.

D.A. Lockhart is the author of Devil in the Woods (Brick Books, 2019) and Wenchikaneit Visions (Black Moss, 2019). His work has been widely anthologized  and has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2019, Grain Magazine, the Malahat Review, CV2, and Triquarterly among others. He holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University-Bloomington. Lockhart currently resides in the Souwesto region of Ontario where he splits time between Pelee Island and Waawiiyaatanong in Three-Fires Confederacy Territory. He is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.