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Frances Boyle
© Curtis Perry
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the poet
Frances Boyle (she/her) is a prairie-raised Canadian writer, long settled in Ottawa, Ontario, whose third collection is Openwork and Limestone. Her debut, Light-carved Passages, was republished after ten years in 2024 as a free, open-access eBook. With her poetry published everywhere from The Fiddlehead and The New Quarterly to The Ekphrastic Review and The Honest Ulsterman, Frances has received a number of prizes – among these, This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt, and Arc Poetry Magazine’s Diana Brebner Prize. She was a long-time member of the editorial board of Arc Poetry Magazine, and is now on the boards of The League of Canadian Poets, and VERSe Ottawa, which runs the VERSeFest international poetry festival.
the poems
The Whole Tall World
A column of light, not steady but scintillating.
I listen for its faint scratchiness,
its syncopated silences, its airy breathing.
Exhalation of pores, the inhalation of mountains
and the sea’s unceasing bellow-lungs.
Surf, like horses that rear and mane-
shake, rush in, retreat. And spume
a spiraling cylinder. A rising, a lifting,
finest droplets hovering on the air.
What tuning will bring me past static
to clarity, to that thrum of silence,
voices chiming, twining, a braid of sound
within that space between breathing,
behind the exhale, pulling the inhale
into animate energy, that silent moment
that might be death but for the animal
compulsion willing our squeezebox lungs
to echo ocean, and breathe.
Water and Stone
‘When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert ...
Ice breathes. Rock has tides. Mountains ebb and flow. Stone pulses.
We live on a restless Earth.’
~ Robert Macfarlane, Underlands ~
Inside your house, the radiator ticks, floors
shift and mutter. The skeleton of struts
and beams is clad with plaster and paint.
You’ve adorned the walls with more paint
—on canvas, on paper. A visiting friend
admires the art, the book-crammed shelves.
Talk turns to what she’s read, what
you haven’t. Excuses for uncracked spines.
Your dog’s steps are halting now, nail-
clack on hardwood more syncopated
than staccato. You hear him sigh.
In the driveway, a crunch as tires compress
the snow. A squirrel traverses wire and bare
branches. The tremble at leafless ends.
You feel the slow flow of tidal rock
how the current supports you, carries you.
Pacific Rim Park, 1984
An amble of half a mile
down to the beach, green
on both sides as I carry
my pack. I emerge to wave-
rush that washes out speech,
and set borrowed tent
on the sand near sea-wrack.
I came on my own to wrench
from the mire of my shame
over deeds which should have
stayed hidden. The campers
next site watch me struggle
with fire. That woman craves
quiet they shush their children.
I beachcomb for hours, sand
under my feet. Pared down
to sorrow, guilt grows slowly
leaner. My feeble campfire
still gives me some heat
while grit, whipped by wind,
works to scour me cleaner.
Lone nights under canvas
deliver release; slow rot, woody
moss-scent their own kind of peace.
Publishing credits
The Whole Tall World: Prairie Fire (Vol. 41, No. 4)
Water and Stone: Rust & Moth (Autumn 2022)
Pacific Rim Park, 1984: exclusive first publication by iamb
© original authors 2024
