“not knowing is most intimate…”
“Christine Smart’s poems perform acts of clear-eyed unsentimental recollection and fierce longing, and move with an earthy music that is all their own. The reader is left with a sense of the sharp, bittersweet tang of the authentic.”
Don McKay
HUMMINGBIRD Ethereal in my hand, an iridescent female, feathers fanned, beak wide open. I place her in the hollow arbutus stump, a stupa, covered with wild rose petals. Did she expect a long life, more sugar water at the feeder, more buzzing and display? The glass tricked her as images beguile us into believing this life will go on and on, this body will endure in a certain way of being. Like the bird, enticed into flying fast, we dash full force toward something glimpsed some truth longed for, just out of reach, on the far side where nothing is clear or certain.
Winner of the Federation of BC Writers Literary Writes Contest 2020
published in WordWorks 2020 vol II