The Dazzle Time

BY MAUREEN HYNES

The skies are emptying of airplanes, maybe

even drones, but my mind is full of intentions

that take off but never seem to land. 

They hover mid-air at the grey horizon, 

shadowing the late afternoon sun.

What strange internalized days
we are enduring—some of us welcoming

them, some chafing against their blankness. 

David Milne, married twice but a solitary man,

painted city streets, lakes and leafy trees 

pressed fanshape-flat against the sky, 

often a woman sewing or reading

in a wicker chair, a still life with a cobalt blue

medicine bottle. Whatever’s in front of me. 

Developed the practice of leaving a blank

space somewhere in the canvas, called it 

“the dazzle area.” One unpainted 

building, say, in a crowded cityscape, to 

snatch and release your interest, 

engage it elsewhere on the canvas. 

Blank—before it meant white, it meant 

to shine, to flash, to burn. Is this 

the blank spot in our years? Can we 

gleam in isolation, polish our inner

lives, brighten our songs & odes, bleach 

our regrets? But now it’s time for more 

window-gazing. The number of kids 

in the tiny park behind our house: zero. 

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MAUREEN HYNES is a past winner of the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Prize. Her fifth collection, Sotto Voce, was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award and the Golden Crown Literary Society’s poetry award for lesbian writers (U.S.).