Poetry by Steve Passey

                       Alexander Rabb CC



Here You Are

Once you admit that you are afraid
you can then start to be brave,
so,
be afraid.
Be afraid together, if you can.
It is the beginning of being strong,
and then you can
stand
run
live
breathe, 
and
maybe even 
forget.
It’s all you can do.

​



Then a Dog Barks, or the Phone Rings

Before the dream ends
there is this thing, and
it sounds like men drowning, 
drowning where we all give up at once
because there is no more room on the boats.
We sink beneath the water
like men falling through the air.
Then a dog barks, or
the phone rings

“Are you ok?”
“I’m doing alright.”
“Are you sure?”

Well, it’s still out there, day or night,
out on the water where the current carries us out of sight of shore,
This thing that sounds like drowning.
It does not bear repeating, and
There isn’t anything else to say
So yes, I am sure.
I’m doing alright.

​
​


Fire of the Pleiades

I can see 
even from this distance 
where someone has made a fire in an old burning barrel 
in defiance of the law.
Sparks from the fire rise, red and elated, 
to hail their sisters in the Pleiades and 
I think that no one 
(No one)
should seek the intervention of the law and 
that there should be fires like this,
fires at night where the sparks rise and rise and 
the luckiest, 
the bravest, 
and the most joyful of them all,
become new stars.

​

Steve Passey is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the short-story collections "Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock" (Tortoise Books, 2017), "Cemetery Blackbirds" (Secret History Books, 2020), the novella "Starseed" (Seventh Terrace), and many other individual things. He is a Pushcart and best of the Net Nominee and is part of the Editorial Collective at The Black Dog Review.

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