Sliding Doors by Cara Gordon

I walked around Halifax in the April mist

And thought, around a corner, I might have glimpsed

A different me, a different life, different books

Under my arm, different paths to other knowledge, a different way to look.

The train arriving at a crawl, a lurch

First saw the sea briefly at Bathurst, but here now, the ocean my church. 

Alternate universe me crosses paths up ahead, 

Different confidence in her stride, other maps she’s read.

Edinburgh in July, I knew I could see myself there,

Breezy meadows of Holyrood, the Firth of Forth’s salt air. 

Told the gift shop man I was already at U of E,

He might’ve known I was fibbing, true though I wanted it to be. 

“From Perth by early morning, I shall see the hills again…”

Allure of Stirling, Ben More, Ben A’an, mountains that could be mundane.

ScotRail zips to Annat Cottage, dear old Skye beckons on

To follow in Audrey’s footsteps, tread the places she had gone.

Trinity College, getting funny looks, “Why aren’t you in class?”

Heaving crowds of Dublin centre, Christ Cathedral rings for mass.

Past great-grandpa’s draper’s shop, St. Mark’s, St. Pat’s 

To Tara Street—maybe I’d be here in a minute, but sure I couldn’t afford a flat. 

Pines and sagebrush, dry Okanagan steppes

Might have been the only choice I’d really regret.

Driving occasionally through Vernon, I thank my lucky stars

I’m not here stuck between peaks and coast, lakes and reservoirs.

The girl in Revy is just a past self, a me who didn’t know

How the Columbia Valley would change her, make her confidence grow.

She wheels along the river and hangs a left on Third,

Wishing for here and there at once, the world in a word.

I know where I come from and where I belong, where home

Will always be; a place between mountains and ocean foam

Where I know the plants’ names and the ringing of my heart’s tune

Resonates with the songs of the shadowed Pacific moon.

But here I am, for a couple years more

At the convergence of medicine rivers four.

Gliding along the canal in golden February light, 

Westwards-setting sun leads me home, but for now, this is right.

Meditations on the sun coming out again by Erika Rakowsky 

winter will get the best of us but we will keep on going

and each day plays out like the one before 

but still we find ourselves growing 

and the moon will rise again 

and surely it will be glowing

the evils of our minds will soon be put to rest

its true when they say that things will work out for the better,

that things will turn out for the best

it’s not something i hope for, it is something i know 

because as long as we’re moving there’s no limit to where we can go

and when we look back behind us surely we’ll know 

that good things can persist even though

the nights that eat us are dark and long and cold

and  even if you are not completely sold 

and even if eventually we all grow old

it’s still a life worth living you’ve got there, it’s still a story worth being told

and soon it feels like you’re someone who knows happy days 

someone who dances and sings and stumbles and sways

someone who’s nightmarish troubles are a thousand worlds away

because we are dancing animals with beats in our hearts and rhythms in our brains

and we are born with skin to soak in the rain

and when those dark winter days get the best of us as they inevitably do

We hold each other close and grow from the pain.