Blaine Marchand's writing has appeared across Canada, the US, Pakistan, India and New Zealand. His seventh collection of poetry, Becoming History, was published in August 2021 by Aeolus House. He is currently finalizing a new manuscript, Promenade. He lives in Ottawa.

Remote Sensing

Every 26 seconds the planet throbs
in the Bight of Bonny, the Gulf of Guinea,
almost imperceptible yet seismometers
continents apart register its exhale.

The telescope peers deep into space,
at old stars that swell up and flicker,
the rise and fall of their brightness,
the recurrent pulse in a galaxy.

Without entering the cosmos of my body,
electrodes probe my heart’s topography,
valves and chambers; visualize the chaos
of contractions within its right atrium.

Gravity’s pull – every atom drawn to another.
At the core mysterious. Ocean tides,
star creation, muscle contraction,
sound waves rising along fault lines.

Blaine Marchand

The Aging Heart

wants to be free from iambic
lub-dub, lub-dub,
the starting point of soliloquy –
          To be, or not to be…

pulses irregularly,
skips a beat,
scan of sonnet –
          When forty winters shall besiege thy brow

mimics the shuffle of feet,
underscores the image in the mirror,
that withering disgrace –
          Does hold Time’s fickle glass, this sickly hour

erratic as memory,
draws a blank,
caesura –
          Make but my name thy love, and love that still

diagnoses the flutter,
the catch in the breath,
just a turn –
          This were to be new made when thou art old

Blaine Marchand

Anchors

These January days
are longer, sun higher,
snow melts off the slope
so drip, drip, drip
down the spikes before
cold nights turn them
rigid and they fringe
the roof – fingers pointing
at inefficient heating,
ventilation, ice dams,
loosened shingles.

But this afternoon
they wax poetic -
prisms of light
along the eaves,
talismans that offer
protection
from danger, from evil,
dazzling swords
to be encircled
by the hands
of skilled warriors.

And tonight, against
the inked sky,
silvered by moon gleam,
they reach past
my bedroom window
for the drifts
mounded against
the foundation
and dream they are
aerial roots that
anchor this house
where I have hunkered
down for forty years.

Blaine Marchand

Chorale of the Air

A gust swirls you in a cowl of snow
as you stand still, apart from us,
in a clearing of the woods.
One path veers left, the other right.
You poise in the centre, arms wide
to embrace the blustery elements.

Your pose is reminiscent of the saintly friar
who left his companions to stand at the field’s edge,
by an undergrowth of thicket, where a flock
had settled, lush as spring blossoms, and praised
these little creatures of the sky, the beat of their wings,
the notes of their song, marvelled at
their beauty, their gift of freedom in flight.

From far and wide, Black-capped chickadees
swoop in, perch on the nearby nodules of shrubs,
hop from stem to stem, their heads angle, pivot
as their keen eyes take you in. Your fingers,
thickened by winter gloves are grooved bark speckled
with seeds. They are eager for the stippled bounty
in your hands. Three single notes signal all-clear.
One by one, they alight on your fingertips,
scoop up an offering, flee into the shelter of trees.

Kernels gone, we follow suit, pass under the swath
of nave shaped by the canopy, to a refuge that thwarts,
dulls the edge to the blizzard.. Chick-a-dee-dee,
chick-a-dee-dee, a chorale of the air, a blessing
thanking you as I do too am grateful for this afternoon,
your small act, the constancy of friendship
and the sustenance it provides.

Blaine Marchand

Expressionist

This trail is beaten up with blue-shadowed imprints
of boots and skis. Behind me a ragged huff
as a woman of many suns jogs by – her jacket,
the yellow of spring, her lycra tights beams of
crimson at summer dawn, the orb of hat dusted
orange as autumn twilight. She hurls herself forward,
flies as if her feet hover, never touch the ground.

I am more grounded, anxious one foot is firmly
planted on the well-worn path, doggedly straight
as the centre of gravity arcs me onward. I am resolute
about this afternoon ritual, though I do not have
a watch or an app to keep track but listen to my body
– the list in my footsteps, the complaint of my arthritic toe,
confirming it is time.to head back, homeward.

I gingerly anchor one foot while the other circles
like an antique compass. In the distance, the runner
is an expressionist painting. The exertion of her limbs
are brushstrokes, paint splashed and dropped onto
the monotone canvas of white. In my brain, images
of her vividness go round and round, draw up
multi-hued turns of phrase. My pace speeds up.

Blaine Marchand