by Alisa Gordaneer
life resumes again, the day after
because after all,
far away, after all, not here. we
ride carousels, eat ice cream, ignore warnings
about sun, how easy it is now
to get burnt. an afternoon of amusement park
is enough to cause damage. you would think
such a pleasantness
of air, such an idyll somehow
outside of these things. you would think
we could be safe
in the arms of the ferris wheel, rising and falling,
safe in whole. life here
as though nothing had ever
happened outside, as though
we didn’t know about bombings,
about how some people hate that
we can
be here laughing about
nothing more than the way
we can move through air, our fingers
waving into sky so pink far away over
here
the lake.
Alisa Gordaneer is the editor of Monday Magazine, an alternative newsweekly in Victoria, BC, Canada, where she lives and writes on an urban homestead with her family. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of poems.