Dee Horne
Dee Horne respectfully acknowledges the traditional and unceded territories of the Coast Salish, K’ómoks and Te’mexw Treaty Association where she lives and the traditional and unceded territory of the Lheidli T'enneh where she also works as a professor in the English Department at the University of Northern British Columbia. Dee has published academic books, chapters, articles and reviews. Her most recent scholarly book is Mary Oliver’s Grass Roots Poetry. As well, she has published fiction and poetry. This fall, she collaborated in an interdisciplinary project on the Salish Sea (“Endangered Relations”). She is currently working on revising a collection of poetry, and these poems are part of that collection.
For the “Among the Unrest” roundtable, Dee is presenting three poems: “Pandemic,” “Precarity,” and “Avalanche.”
Pandemic
Cloistered in
confined to home.
Outside,
cherry blossoms wave
to rhododendrons.
Neither mind
incessant rain.
Petals litter sidewalks,
soft carpet of cherry
blossoms become
compost.
Precarity
The path’s not clear,
in this pandemic.
Virus once unknown, now near
travelled from pangolin
to humans.
Every moment is precarious.
Lockdown, locked in
people wonder when
work will resume.
Every moment is precarious.
Streets deserted.
Businesses closed.
All that once was
is now nearly foreclosed.
Every moment is precarious.
Contagion of fears
circulate and escalate
viral shedding of ideas
mutate.
Injustice breeds
creative changes.
Every moment is precious.
AVALANCHE
Injustice
accumulates like snow
avalanches …
thundering defiance
accumulates like snow
tumbling clouds.
Thundering defiance
deafeningly loud
tumbling clouds
suffocating voices,
deafeningly loud,
silence choices.
Suffocating voices
beneath weight of white
silence choices
buried, but not quite.
Beneath weight of white
voices will not remain
buried but not quite
still cry out.
Voices will not remain
restrained, silenced
still cry: out!
Swim through snow to surface
restrained, silenced
in terrain greatly changed
swim through snow to surface
dark to light.
In terrain greatly changed
those former powers
dark, to light
exposed.