poetry

Flourish
by George Amabile

Shakespeare could ne'er resist a quibble and John Hancock wrote so large his name became two words for Signature.

In the old West, a frontier scout could tell at once if the arrow were Apache or Comanche and everyone in the cafés along the Champs Elysees knew the name of the poet who took his lobster for an evening stroll.

We are not gifted with the prismatic spread of a peacock's tail or the glistening drapery of an Angel Fish, but whether determined or ad libbed our quirks and flares reveal who we are, like the arabesque of my father's hand as it left the gear shift of the '39 Ford and returned to the serious business of driving.

George Amabile has published in Canada, the USA, England, Wales, Europe, South America, Australia, and New Zealand in over a hundred anthologies, magazines, journals, and periodicals. He has edited The Far Point, Northern Light and has published eight books. The Presence of Fire (McClelland & Stewart, 1982) won the CAA National Prize; his long poem, Durée, placed third in the CBC Literary Competition (1991); "Popular Crime" won first prize in the Sidney Booktown International Poetry Contest (2000); "Dimuendo" was awarded third place in the Petra Kenney International Poetry Competition for 2005 and "A Raft of Lilies" won second place in the MAC national poetry contest, "Friends" (2007). His most recent publication is Tasting the Dark: New and Selected Poems (The Muses Company, an imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc. Winnipeg, 2001).