Willendorf ladies
Sleeping on a bed made of books read long
ago, mattress filled with artifacts of dead
geese and ducks, living descendants, lineage maybe
4th or 5th cousins flock at the small lake
on the corner of Reservoir and Beacon
ducks on the grass verge, beaks
in shallow water spearing snails, tailfeathers
twitch in their mated pageant, a flock
of starlings hunting beetles in the nearby
field, an expanse of gravel paths curved
along the thigh of the lake, sometimes walking
there, bird bones and pinions—
and now, only halfway into sleep, a blue glass jar,
in the window’s breeze, bones become
flutes, barbs flutter, and my current
read, the one on Paleolithic Venus figurines—
dreams have left me bright spots in the eye.
My quilt kicked off, the sun’s fingers
explore new terrain, sheets
the colour of peppermint ice cream,
and here I lie thinking about Venus in her roundness,
her sculptor, their shell caps, generous thighs—
I awake wanting netted shells for my head,
a bird bone flute to whistle up the gods.
I’m an asshole
In it I take neither pride nor shame,
just recognize that a negative personality
comes with skills, like deleting the dead
and the no longer viable.
The day of her funeral, I left
the church and my mother behind.
In the intervening years,
when people asked, some therapist
say, I’d recount the story, tell the tale,
feel something, I suppose. Still,
the image of my mother sat moribund,
a shallow fountain that no longer pumped.
Perfectly content to let her stay,
until the day I died,
the trickster (Coyote for me) came back
to check on me, got me into the first
safe space I’ve ever known.
And not long after that dream
of mother, making waves again.
And here we are writing her
back into my life.
Damn Coyote.
Carol Shillibeer poems have been published in many print and online publications and received nominations for both Pushcart and Best of the Net. Her most recent book was released in September 2023 from Dancing Girl Press, under the name Pearl Button. It is called Lune /-/ aria. Carol currently is on the board of directors for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.