31/31: THE JOURNALS OF SUSANNA MOODIE by Margaret Atwood & Charles Pachter (1997 Macfarlane Walter & Ross) https://tinyurl.com/ny7fs6y2
"I am the old woman
sitting across from you on the bus,
her shoulders drawn up like a shawl;
out of her eyes come secret
hatpins, destroying
the walls, the ceiling
Turn, look down:
there is no city;
this is the center of a forest
"But two thousand years hence -
hear me - the sun will stand wrong in Pisces
as you nudge the buds from snow. So
time drifts and slips. It's a fearful thing
to fall into the hands of the living God."
29/31: THE BROKEN ARK - A BOOK OF BEASTS poems chosen by Michael Ondaatje, drawings by Tony Urquhart (1971 Oberon Press) https://bit.ly/3t4uCWh
"He dreams of mastodons
And mammoths and still his pride beats
Like the heart of the world, he knows he could reach
To the end of space if he stood still and imagined the effort."
"1890 CE According to an ancient Russian proverb, a woman in a tub is a room within a room. Sponging his wife's pregnant belly, Sergey Malyutin conceives the first matryoshka doll."
"their sounds
like noise or music, and sometimes
these things were indistinguishable, as in a baby's cry.
Their ordinariness does not diminish them.
Now I tilt my head, and listen."