Latchkey, poetry

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Canada), 2021.

Previously published as On Scalding Glass: A Summer Collection (Fullosia Press [USA], 2002).

An excerpt

The Swamp

Beavers have dammed up

Dragon Creek again.

Hay fields along Johnston Ledge

Are a swamp. Blades of grass

Pierce the ice-flat surface.

But ducks land:

Morning pink and inverted

Purple hills shatter

As ripples paint a new scene.

I imagine webby feet

Kicking beneath splashes

Of electrum. I want to see

Mosquito-larva and tadpoles.

I fancy trout that escaped

The fat creek, that slide

Through new space

In old time.

I hope nobody

Dynamites the dam,

But someone will.

Someone must.

And yet, I hope nobody

Blows up that dam.

The author

Dan Lukiv is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). His creative writing has appeared in 19 countries. Recently, he has been experimenting with temporal shifts and narrative strings in his haiku and senryu.