Poetry By William Ross

r. nial bradshaw CC




Night Walking

An absence can be a presence in life.
— Annemarie Ni Churreáin

Walking home on a warm winter night,
I sense you near me. It must have been the
mist that coaxed you out, a strange veil
hiding the horizon where you were always
headed, bags packed and ready.

Sixteen years now since you settled in
your chair and found yourself shipping out
on the opioid express. Tonight, you’re on
the move again. You rose up from your
grave, came two thousand miles in the
dark to be with me.

We walk in silence—still, I hear your voice
and take comfort in your presence,
sister.

​



​Jackson’s Point

The cottages rode a gentle hill
south of the lake, and at
the heart of the horseshoe road
an enormous tree, its hidden roots

probing the centre of the
round world, fingers firmly
gripping, while a crown standing up
of eyes and ears into the sky

heard everything passing beneath
and said nothing,
or perhaps the whisper of leaves was
how it spoke of the jackass neighbour

who yelled at his wife, pounding the
kitchen table and, heading for his truck,
slammed the front door, his rottweiler
that tore the ear of a wandering mutt,

in another cottage a teenage son adrift
and hooked on amphetamine, and only
the lake remained as calm as the giant
buried waist-deep in grass,

looking down as muscle cars and
pickups rode the horseshoe at the end
of day, little kids ran screaming,
and birds took flight.




​William Ross is a Canadian writer and visual artist living in Toronto. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Bluepepper, Humana Obscura, New Note Poetry, Cathexis Northwest Press, Topical Poetry, Heavy Feather Review,*82 Review, The New Quarterly and Alluvium. Recent work is forthcoming in Bindweed Magazine.
​