Spirit at Summer’s End

Rivulets of scent, dust,
wind-borne debris,
bent straw and bee music,
the shrunken honeysuckle
evaporating from the year,
a few flies passing nearby
swept a fraction sideways
by the air—
at any given moment
something rare and exact
will have happened here,
where the spirit lies down,
gone dormant,
whose life this was,
whose life was (all of it,
from end to end)
one summer.

Roo Borson

Roo Borson has won both the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her eleventh book, Rain; Road; An Open Boat, was published in 2012.

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"My latest work for The Walrus was a portrait that accompanied a review of Sheila Heti's new book, Pure Color. I love collaborating with the art directors at The Walrus because I always know the result will be spectacular." - Lauren Tamaki

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