Goodbye, by Jude Goodwin

I heard you say goodbye
in a dream, your voice
was strange, a kind of sliding
sand sound, like that of a bank
alongside the river, and then stones

unearthed and loose, or bones
freed by a landslide,
rolling towards my belly,

as if I were standing, hip deep
in cold water, salmon rubbing
themselves against my shins,
as if I were looking up at you
and your voice filled the world,
or was so small only a dog
could hear, lift its black ear
and turn your way. I heard you
like the snapping of cottonwoods
overhead, like the great wings
of an eagle circling
its roost, like the wet
folding of a fisherman’s coat sleeve

as he casts one more time,
and the singing he hears
as his hook and line
leave him, lift up
over the clean currents,
flash and disappear.

Jude Goodwin is an internet poet whose poems can be read in print journals including Cider  Press Review, Burnside Review, Comstock Review, and CV2. Her poems have repeatedly won and placed well in the IBPC New Poetry Voices competition, were twice short-listed in the CBC Radio Literary Awards, and can be found online in journals such as Eclectica and The Pedestal.  Jude lives in Squamish BC, Canada where she runs a small publishing and design shop. Her websites are www.judegoodwin.com jude@goodwinstudios.com  judegoodwin.com

© 2011, Jude Goodwin