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April 26 is this year’s Poem in your Pocket Day. Originally organized by the Acadamy of American Poets, participation simply means carrying a poem in your pocket for the day to share with anyone and everyone, wherever you are! We’ve selected Julie Paul’s ‘Weight of the World’ from her 2017 collection, The Rules of the Kingdom.
Weight of the Word
In the woodlot, my father asked me
to lift a maple log,
then a piece of ironwood,
just to watch my face.
When he was twenty-two
his own father died; the oldest child, like me,
my father picked up the pieces
and grew up.
The meaning of father for him:
provider, protector, chopper and piler of wood.
His favourite food:
the tip at the end of wild honeysuckle
– columbine – the honey-sweet blossom
a delicacy from meadowed clearings.
Could we live on it?
was never a question.
When my father showed me how to eat
flowers, I was already living on it.
I lived on that rare
tenderness for days.
All he asked was that I love him,
handing me those logs to weigh,
to see what he could offer,
to feel their heft and know
that he would keep his word.
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