Momentum

This trip makes your heart hurt, not
that old slow ache, echoes of tires on wet pavement
through an underpass, but palpable
palpitation, crazed clock ticking
sideways through time. A beam
swings up a hill, makes sculpture of the clouds
carve out the road bulky solid.
Things you pass at the side but don’t see
properly-stark black weeds and fences,
trees and sheds and houses
beyond the moving tunnel and the light burrows,
signs and neon lights, and your eyes burn dry
when you’re this tired and the heater blows its weary breath.
You want to live forever with your family in the space
within the passageway carved by light.
The moon a knowing blood orange
hovers on the horizon, takes light doesn’t
give it. Pulls you on with the same grave carelessness
she pulls the oceans. So cold in your warm car
you feel the greedy night put its mouth to the windows
watching the tousled teenagers curled like cats
in the backseat, their mingled breath milkwarm
from the singing and gossip, now hushed
as you hurtle through the night, moon-mad with memories.
You want to crawl inside
their pearly skin, peer through their eyes
at the world and the moonlight on it.

Bios

Frances Boyle

(update provided in May 2023) Frances Boyle’s most recent book is Openwork and Limestone (Frontenac House, 2022). In addition to two earlier poetry books, she is the author of Tower, a novella (Fish Gotta Swim Editions 2018) and Seeking Shade, an award-winning short story collection (The Porcupine’s Quill 2020). Her first novel, Skin Hunger, also with The Porcupine’s Quill, is forthcoming in 2024. She is a regular reviewer with both Arc and Canthius. Raised on the prairies, Frances has long lived in Ottawa on unceded and unsurrended Algonquin Anishinaabeg territory. Visit www.francesboyle.com and follow @francesboyle19 on Twitter and Instagram. Photo credit for headshot: Miranda Krogstad