Some of my poems have been appearing online recently, one at Bywords.ca (http://www.bywords.ca/) and three more on the Poetry Super Highway (https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/poetry-from-leslie-dianne-and-colin-morton/).

The Bywords poem might get lost in the shuffle, so you may read it here:

Lost

It’s under something it’s
behind something it’s in
the right place for something else.

No it’s on something it’s
in front of something it’s where
you don’t see it because you know it’s not there.

It’s your only one it’s
always there when you need it it
will come to you in a minute.

It’s on the tip of your tongue it’s
what you used to do with whozit you know
what you were talking about just now.

Over on the Poetry Super Highway are three more poems. The first two, “Travelling” and “Nimrod,” take a sidewise view on desperate times for refugees, especially in the Middle East. This third poem looks back at a post-war childhood in Calgary.

Nose Hill Revisited

No horses graze above the city now.
Mint and sage, the prairie’s scent remains.
Abandoned cars we found as boys,
home to families of fox or skunk,
have long-since been hauled away.

I leave the gravel path,
follow deer trails into willow brake,
through damp coulee where spring runoff pools,
look out at mountains snow-capped in the sun,
or east toward the vague horizon,
the mirage I chased so far.

On the frontier of a growing city
poised between boom and bust,
we walked to schools named for Mounties
‒ Colonel Irvine, Colonel Macleod ‒
grew up itching for a fight
or challenge, enemy or rival.

We roamed hills known for eons
to hunters who left little trace.
Wrote our initials in fresh cement,
instant fossils of the post-war boom.

We’d do anything to matter
though we saw what it did to our dads.
We climbed a slope where we cast a long shadow,
shouted our names to the wind.

In person poetry readings are starting up again. My next will be July 1 in the park at Kingston ArtFest.