Rhenisch, Harold

Canada, (b. 1958)

The Brothers

  1. The sun is a bluebird now
  2. She sits in the arms of the birch
  3.  
  4. They talk all day about Lorne
  5. who revived a piglet mouth to mouth
  6.  
  7. yesterday that was crushed by the sow
  8. Who has watched every one of his ewes
  9.  
  10. die in a breech birth and whose brother
  11. fishes shrimp off of Tofino
  12.  
  13. and Hornby Island who sleeps in his boat
  14. and has no other house on this earth
  15.  
  16. Yesterday the sun was an owl
  17. She hid in the green veils of the night
  18.  
  19. She whispered to the roots of the aspens
  20. that feather the air and they whispered back
  21.  
  22. about a woman with two fathers
  23. who fish sheep on the Horse Lake Road
  24.  
  25. dragging their nets just inches off the sawdust
  26. and who lift them together
  27.  
  28. There in the bottom of the net all crushed together
  29. lie the pink and black piglets squirming
  30.  
  31. the sky is a sow her breath is hot her eyes are small
  32. The fathers sort the piglets out and lay them in the straw
  33.  
  34. and cast the nets again But today
  35. the sun is a mountain bluebird
  36.  
  37. she has slipped on her silk dress
  38. Her skin smells of sweetgrass she stands
  39.  
  40. still with the birch at the shore all day
  41. and sighs While under the ice the sheep mill about glowing

© Harold Rhenisch. First published in Canadian Literature. Issue #147, Winter 1995, pg. 125-6.

About the Poet:

Harold Rhenisch (b. 1958), is a Canadian poet, editor and writer with an extensive career in the publishing industry, teaching and agriculture.

Rhenisch graduated from the Department of Creative Writing, the University of Victoria in 1980. He is the author of more than eleven poetry books, and is the editor/publisher of The Milestones Review, a book review quarterly and publisher of chapbooks.

He has been the education chair and communication chair of the League of Canadian Poets and has worked as a member of the B.C. Ministry of Education Fine Arts Curriculum Overview Team. He actively mentors and edits writers from across North America. He lives in 150 Mile House, B.C. [DES-07/14]

Additional information:

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