canadian ~ twenty-first century literature since 1999


Fault Lines of a Geographer

by John Barton

how strange to remake the planet in the image of eternal
youth, the continents, shifting, rub

plate against plate, restless
mountains risen under pressure along fault

lines while sudden inlets form at the periphery, released
sighs you track, mapping rivers that, giddy

collapse into them, sweat collecting in the hollows
along your collarbone while you work

things out, the exhilarations
of the day counterbalanced by the weight

you lift above you head—shoulders, thighs, and back
hardening with time into fundament apparently

immutable, chest become the breastplate
of a continent behind which your heart

dreams in a landlocked sea
the planet rescued

from a brain too mindful of the soft
rich clay that houses it, of all that is ground

down and mixed into a grey amalgam
and spread thin, muddying

shallows across which our ancestors will one day stray
recently erect and marking us with indifferent footprints
 

 

 

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TDR is produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 

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ISSN 1494-6114. 

 

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada.