Latchkey, poetry

Revised Edition: LukivPress (Canada), 2021.

Previously published as On Scalding Glass: A Summer Collection (Fullosia Press [USA], 2002).

An excerpt

The Swamp

Beavers have dammed up
Dragon Creek again.
Hay fields along Johnston Ledge
Are a swamp. Blades of grass
Pierce the ice-flat surface.

But ducks land:
Morning pink and inverted
Purple hills shatter
As ripples paint a new scene.

I imagine webby feet
Kicking beneath splashes
Of electrum. I want to see
Mosquito-larva and tadpoles.
I fancy trout that escaped
The fat creek, that slide
Through new space
In old time.

I hope nobody
Dynamites the dam,
But someone will.
Someone must.
And yet, I hope nobody
Blows up that dam.

The author

Dan Lukiv is a poet, novelist, columnist, short story and article writer, and independent education researcher (hermeneutic phenomenology). His creative writing has appeared in 19 countries. Recently, he has been experimenting with temporal shifts and narrative strings in his haiku and senryu.