Fifteen Pages

BY KIM FAHNER

A Twitter post, from somewhere in America, 

a raging against conspiracy theorists, a president 

who topples under the weight of his own head,

and a plea to think this might actually be real:

on the weekend, a cell phone photo 

of The Boston Globe—spread open—

and fifteen pages full of obituaries. 

That equation is a statistic, a math problem,

but if you lean in close, listen, it translates to: 

grandmothers who used to love baking scones,

uncles who told made up stories while drinking pints, 

sisters who couldn’t sit together at the very end, 

fathers who left their hats at home in the closet, 

wives who forgot to turn down the soup on the stove,

brothers who cleaned eavestroughs in October, 

and friends who dog-eared pages on the borrowed copy

of your favourite book just last week. 

Fifteen pages, full of people, part of a curve on a graph

that has a sharp edge, draws blood, leaves a scar. 

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KIM FAHNER lives in Sudbury, Ontario. She was the fourth poet laureate for Greater Sudbury (2016–2018). Her latest book of poems is These Wings (2019). Fahner may be reached via her website at www.kimfahner.com.