John Smith: Poet Laureate 2002-2004

John Smith was appointed PEI’s first poet laureate in December 2002, serving until December 2004.

It is unbroken

It is unbroken though forsaken, set

in the tilt of trees toward the prevailing sun.

Not lost, though unregarded, spoken in buried syllables.

Now it rises, a slow star at midsummer,

almost breaks horizon, then glides submissively down

with another declining year. A ripple is enough

in the half-undreaming stillness of lustral places

not yet endowed, or a leaf that falling

meets its shadow on the ground

in a wilderness untraversed where a bird sings unseen.

Like nothing else. Like nothing. Scattered

naked in retreat before the nightmarch

of an alien horde that passes and does not return.

Or say it is you fondling one of a billion stones.

from Midnight Found you Dancing, Ragweed Press, 1986