First Winter

We go back

not to begin

but because

it remains

—

She sees the snow

for the first time

reaches

as if it is arriving

for her

—

I have seen this before

or something like it

the same light

flattening the road

the same distance

closing

—

The road goes

the lake follows

the tracks fill

until nothing recalls

what was there

—

She steps forward

leaves a mark

I remember

how quickly

that happens

—

I stand behind her

and feel it again

just the way

everything settles

—

She turns

as if to show me

something new

—

I almost believe her

—

But the surface

is already holding

—

I do not say it

—

I watch

as it takes

the shape

it had before

Every Point Is North

North is not direction but ordeal.
A summons written in ice,
answered by wind
that strips language from the mouth.

The caribou move like scripture
across a white page that will not close.
They leave hieroglyphs in the drifts—
signs older than sovereignty,
older than our grief at being small.

Not empty, this whiteness—
it already has a name.
We arrive with maps;
the wind corrects our spelling.

To speak of Canada is to stutter.
The word trembles in the air,
a syllable shackled to Parliament,
to treaties broken in the snow,
to a history that vanishes
the further you walk toward the pole.

The north we measure in miles.
The North we enter by silence—
a latitude of the mind
where every point is N.

And yet the North remains:
a cathedral of salt light,
a wound frozen open.

Men came with their banners,
their rifles and their maps,
believing dominion could be hammered
into the permafrost.

But the sky made a mockery of them,
each aurora a laughter
in green fire.

Sovereignty is ash.

Silence rules like a monarch,
crowned in ice,
faceless,
eternal.

Still we dream of belonging.

We see in the frozen horizon
our fathers bent with labour,
our mothers speaking in smoke,
ourselves reflected as shadows
on the skin of the tundra.

The North gives nothing back.
It keeps what we offer—
blood, labour, myth—
and returns only its vastness.

A raven lifting from the ice,
its wings
the only sound.

North / South (35)

Saigon was fluorescent.

Plastic stools in primary colours.
Dragon fruit split open on metal trays.
Petrol slicks trembling in the gutter.

At the lights—

Handsome.
Teacher.
You married?
I take you Phú Quốc.

Laughter, throttles snapping.
Boys three to a bike—

hey man—
motherfucker—

English like chrome, flung like confetti.

I climbed narrow stairs
to the gym above the bánh mì shop.
Concrete sweating through the paint.
Iron stacked against the wall.
Fan cutting heat into pieces.

I widened my shoulders on purpose.
Mirrors agreed with me.

Nights moved fast.
So did I.

District 1, blinking. Red. Yellow.
Ao dai blue slicing traffic.
Music leaking out of doorways.
I left before anyone asked me to stay.

In both cities
a man sleeps in a hammock
strung between two poles
in the middle of traffic.

Motorbikes bend around him;
it's no hassle.

One bucket of cigarettes.
One bucket of cash.
Notes open to sun and exhaust.

I have seen a monk step into the river of engines—
saffron cloth steady—
and the current part,
close again behind him.

Hanoi is narrower.

Broth at dawn.
Steam lifting into a sky the colour of tin.
Concrete the shade of cooled tea.
Winter pressing low.

Thirty-five.

A man on the pavement asks the time.
I tell him.
He nods. Thank you.

Upstairs—
light on,
water running,
a small voice practicing new words.

Same traffic.
Different centre.

The Line That Moves Without Us

A line is drawn across a landscape.
No one remembers the first hand that drew it.
Everyone feels its pressure.

They call it progress,
as if naming a thing gives it mercy,
as if direction were the same as purpose.

What begins as promise
becomes argument.
What begins as argument
becomes weather—
something you endure
because there is nothing else to do.

Some people fear the line.
Others worship it.
Most simply live beside it,
holding their breath
without knowing why.

The land adjusts.
Maps shift.
Voices rise, then break.

But the line remains—
indifferent, humming,
certain as the cold.

It is not the line that divides us.
It is what we offer to it:
our longing,
our anger,
our belief that the future
must choose a side.

When the noise fades,
the line continues—
patient, untroubled,
and it endures.

What does not continue
is the story we told
of how much it mattered
that we spoke,
or stayed silent,
or stood exactly where we stood
when the ground beneath us changed.