Fourteen Weeks

by Rob Taylor

No people in the park today,

one goose—groundskeeper

trimming and fertilizing.

How admirable!

to see lightning and not think

life is fleeting.

I practice what you’re teaching me

until I am a bench or tree

or air and the bird’s snitch

snitching of the grass

replaces engine sounds

accrued at 10th and Fir.

Dry creek

glimpsed

by lightning.

Ancient elephant knees.

Ulna rising from camouflage.

Webbed foot aloft, primaries

doing their steady work on the heel.

And that long black beak.

Grass and then no grass.

From The News by Rob Taylor (Kentville, Nova Scotia: Gaspereau Press, 2011). The title of this poem refers to the fourteenth week of the author’s wife’s pregnancy, which the book sought to document. In italic, the first quoted haiku is by Bashō, the second by Issa.