DOE & DAUGHTERS

We have
our winter coats
on now.

We meet as I
exit the
small parental forest,
as we have
periodically through
the summer.

The new season
will make changes
and my presence
will quickly seem
less alarming —
our coats heavier,
meant to protect us
in such similar ways.

Please, do not fear me,
I know I am a human
but when we meet
I am trying so hard
not to be one.

TODAY

Everything wants to be
in a poem,
today, a break in
the colder season.

I look at my bike,
the holy transport,
listen through a wind
and hear nothing;

there will be a time
I turn fifty-nine,
when everything
is a tomorrow.

Chad Norman and his poems have appeared for the past 35 years in publications across Canada and around the world. He organizes and hosts RiverWords: Poetry & Music Festival every year in Truro, NS.

In October 2016, Chad was invited by the Nordic Assn. for Canadian Studies to give talks on Canadian Poetry and read his work at Borupgaard Gym, Copenhagen; Risskov Gym, Aarhus; and in Malmo, Sweden. That tour inspired Chad to write Counting Coins In Denmark And Sweden.

His most recent books are Selected & New Poems (Mosaic Press), Waking Up On The Wrong Side of The Sky (Grant Block Press), and his new book, Squall: Poems In The Voice Of Mary Shelley, is due in Spring 2020 (Guernica Editions). He has just completed The Black Rum Poems, and is working on a further manuscript, A Small Matter of Inclusion.

In October 2017 he read at various venues in Kingston, Ottawa, and Montreal. Chad recently completed a speaking/reading tour of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, as a celebration of literacy and Canadian Poetry. His love for walking is infinite.