alone.
Anthem for a Small Country
In my country we admire the ambitious dust: long into the night,
for endless hours, it practises such gentleness on the window's sill.
Our country's flower is the rose in the curved bed of the fingernail.
In the cloud's menagerie, our animal is the solitary wisp.
As for religion, we peer into drains and the old burrows
of earthworms, looking for the shyness of our shrinking god.
Our territory often dwindles to a smooth slip
of a pillow, a fleece blanket and the bed's four posts.
What we lack in fellow citizens, we address by mumbling
to ourselves. And to the white cat, and the calico.
From the industry of sleep, exporting
small, domestic sounds.
-Anne-Marie Turza
The Malahat Review
Fall 2009
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