POETRY: RICHARD-YVES SITOSKI

HERE

Here contains all we need, said the ice to the stream,
which recalls evaporation as a form of estivating.
On a tree trunk a nuthatch reorients the world or itself,
I cannot tell. But something is upside-down
and I want to spread-eagle on the ground
like shot when playing cops and robbers.
Snowfall is all the beauty I permit myself.
It is light and shows no regret though it’s 130 days
till the start of summer, when there will be monarchs
and we will tell ourselves, without irony, that one butterfly
is silent but a forest’s worth can drown out a chainsaw.

Richard-Yves Sitoski (he/him) is a songwriter, performance poet, and the 2019-2023 Poet Laureate of Owen Sound, Ontario, on the territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. He is also the Artistic Director of the Words Aloud festival. His work has appeared in Prairie Fire, Train, The Fiddlehead, Bywords.ca, and elsewhere. He has given performances in industrial ruins, has composed a chapbook in collaboration with earth worms, and has written verse on snow with biodegradable dye. 2018 finalist and semi-finalist in the International Songwriting Competition, 2021 John Newlove Award winner, 2021 Best of the Net nominee. No Sleep ‘til Eden (Ginger Press, 2020), an augmented reality collection of poems on the environment. Co-editor, with Penn Kemp, of Poems in Response to Peril: An Anthology in Support of Ukraine (Pendas Productions/Laughing Raven Press, 2021), profits from which will go to PEN Ukraine. Forthcoming chapbook: How to Be Human, from Bywords.ca