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from Overheard by Conifers (1996), p. 22

LEGEND: THE STONES

She gave him back his pledge,
signature and all.
They lay at the sea’s edge
at the night’s fall.

The moon, when it rose,
full and empty and pale,
having spied on their repose,
heard a whispering gale.

from distances unknown
begin to recount histories
that were their own;
begin to relate mysteries

of love and their own sense
of having not understood
Love’s dearth of recompense,
for evil, for good.

And when the shadow ship
that would bear them away
from night and the sea’s lip
to a sunscorched day

beached, and bid them board,
they will instead to stay
and become two stones, stored
in eternity’s play

of waves and wahing sands
and sighing of wind
and the wasting of love’s demands,
kind or unkind;

each in dispassionate stone,
the spirit’s turmoil ceased,
kissed by the sea alone,
imprisoned, released.

from Month’s Mind (1992), p. 25

A BOOK CALLED WINTER

Time on our hands, we sit here leafing through
a book called Winter; half a chapter done,
already the declining of the sun
clothes earth and us in his own yellowing hue.
we shall not come upon high passion here
on these calm pages, or recapture
of bugle and drumbeat, neither will be found
the hunter’s cunning or the muffled footsteps plying
the snowfall road where yesterday they reaced,
and food for thoughts that gather and go flying
down pathways that the snowdrifts have effaced,
dnd memories to stir a momen’s sighing,
some sharp, some not ungrateful to the taste.

Used by permission.

read his obituary in the Prince Albert Herald
read an interview
return to John V. Hicks
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