Peter Stuhlmann

Fools' Gold
       -For Jacklyn

Branches scrape their dry knuckles
against the window        and he thinks
this can't be much of a book
if I can still hear trees sifting
the thin hours, like prospectors
searching their currents to fortune
Then he thinks, as his mind
is apt to wander, what of this
country        a country I have
never really seen- never felt her dirt
run warm through my fingers
And then, like bark chafing
glass        like a coming storm,
the words        who am I?


Trans-Canada

Every spring it’s like this
The highway’s a hairline
split between lakes too restless
to have grown a sleep of ice
and coarsely stubbled fields
nursing the late season
snow Again we are driving
this strip the hell away
from somewhere…
                                         hurtling
toward renewal, hopeful
beyond the horizon
that we will catch
and take hold

Peter Stuhlmann writes: In writing I attempt chiefly to reach for an authentic dialogue with the world I find myself in. My home is currently in Ottawa Canada.