poetry

Frontier, in Cinecolor
by George Amabile

Out among the mesas and arroyos, the saguaro, cholla and prickly pear, sunbeams pour through the overcast like a daydream of organ pipes.

The steam locomotive, black with gold trim, dragging its chain of chuffs and clanks down Main Street, rattles the gilt-lettered windows

of the shops. Sometimes, not often, we miss what we escaped from: hustle, rush the anonymity of cities …. Drifters

hop off a freight car, drop a few bucks at the Saloon, the Hotel, or Madame Heidi's Desert Rose Emporium. They stay for a day

a week, show up at the Bank, the Post Office, the General Store. But it won't be long before their eyes turn, toward the mountains, and the sea.

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).