blue skies poetry

it doesn’t matter that
you were on my mind this morning
before I fully awoke
dream still alive in filmy dark.
I could see your eyes,
eyes that I could once tell the time by.

You said you wasted too much of your time
when we were young partying with me.
A few months after that
you came to my other friend’s funeral and heard the elegy
and said you hoped you could be a friend like that to me again.
I don’t know which of your eyes to believe.
I would call but you would tell me
you are too busy to talk
like you have been for years
and your kids need something, just now.
Kids I’ve never met, though I am sure they’re in elementary school.
And you have to go and you have book club tonight
with your very good friend who you like to drink wine with.
She lives so close
and she’s so great.
I am sure that’s true.
I know what it’s like
to look in your eyes when you laugh.

Then I remember what you said
about wasting all that time,
and I want you to know,
I just don’t feel that way
at all.

~ Micheline Maylor

Micheline Maylor recent publication “Starfish”, a chapbook with Rubicon Press, sold out in 2011. She became a recent graduate of the May Studio at the Banff Centre in 2010. She was named honourable mention in the UK’s 2007 Petra Kenny poetry awards. She has upcoming fiction and poetry in The Shyness Anthology, and Stampede Noir Anthology. Her latest works can be found in the Freshwater Pearls Anthology, Literary Mama, Numero Cinq, and the Literary Review of Canada. She attained a BA with honours at the University of Calgary in English, a Masters degree with distinction in creative writing at Lancaster in Northern England, and a Ph.D. at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in English Language and Literature with a specialisation in Creative Writing and 20th Century Canadian Literature. She has been the recipient of the Overseas Research Scholarship, the International Research Scholarship and Alberta Foundation for the Art grants. She has poetry published in over 50 journals in 5 countries. A certified poetry fanatic, she teaches creative writing, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and composition at Mount Royal University. She also teaches various poetry workshops at the Alexandra Writer’s Centre Society, serves as its past President, and is the editor of FreeFall literary magazine. Her first book is titled Full Depth: The Raymond Knister Poems (2007) and is available through Wolsak & Wynn.