Pat Buik
Listening for the alphabet
Pines and birches scented Vancouver mountain.
Child and woman walked in the woods to listen:
mountain streams are lyrical over pebbles
drifting in runnels.
Earth delighted them with her sly phonetics
once they realised what the springs were saying.
One sang ai, another an oo, and all were
uttering vowels.
Where were consonants? When the earth gave answer
kuh was thrush's whack of a snail on paving;
rain was puh, and Canada geese went ff when
tearing at grasses.
Page(s) 6
magazine list
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- Lamport Court
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
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- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
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- Yellow Crane, The