YVETTE LECLAIR

Bypassing Acheron 
        for Gwendolyn MacEwen

Think about the beautiful red.
Look past the blazing water. Do not turn
the first page of your new book into a lamentation.
Rather, think about Gwendolyn
with eyes at the back of her head,
sending her breathless words into the darkness.
Casting well beyond the roiling river.

Forego the woe, the wailing.
Renounce the not especially distinguished.
Take this mood of sadness, turn it around with red.
One dwells too much in creative process
and not enough in creation.
Elysium is here. Start collecting images.
Make an assemblage, an image poem.

There is great happiness to be found in this world
and the possibility of mercy.