Poetry

Featured Poem

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Canada Mints

By Fred Lord, Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing

 

Maybe if I hadn’t accidentally touched

one of the greasy, wrinkled, writhing

babies’ thumbs with my own,

I wouldn’t have done it.

 

The newborn mice, the pinkness,

size, and consistency of those erasers

we cap pencils with, were sleeping

in the folds of the ratty gray sweatshirt

I’d left in the cockpit of the kayak

in the garage all winter

and was bringing into the house to wash.

 

Startled, by reflex, I shook them out,

scattering them across the driveway,

then watched in clichéd horror

as the crows, on whom nothing is lost,

cawing triumphantly to each other,

came down like consequences

and gobbled them up, as if I’d fed them candy,

those Canada Mints I’d liked as a kid.

 

Then it was over. No witnesses.

But I threw the sweatshirt out,

as if it might be evidence.