Variant 1

Ectopic Beats

Brenda Schmidt

“January's Variant”

what is the time remaining if not January's | variant bird-
gaze beyond wing-tips | the feathers' migration over time
as they became light | perfectly
arranged like daydreams before doubt grew new skin | or us
when waking up was joy | not this blank stare | this grief
fledged but molting | fall plumage dull as grass in drought |
so apt | to adapt to loss | this eulogy birds write with goaded squirrel
in a moment's | blurred scurry | across | a trail of branches |
as if the birds saw your mouth over a limp sparrow's bill | how little
puffs failed to make it breathe | how dull | your reflection | in the window
this loss | a dirty pane of glass | the feather smudge | where flight ended

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Brenda Schmidt writes and paints in Creighton, a mining town in northeastern Saskatchewan. Her first collection of poetry, A Haunting Sun, was published by Thistledown Press in 2001. Poems from her new manuscript More Than Three Feet of Ice (for which she won the 2003 Alfred G. Bailey Prize for Poetry) have appeared in Kaleidoscope Journal, Urban Coyote: New Territory, Grain, Other Voices, In Medias Res and Zygote, and are forthcoming in Room of One's Own and The Harpweaver. Suites of poems from it were aired on CBC's Gallery in 2002 and 2004. In 2004, Globe Theatre's On the Line performed Brenda's short play Points of Interest, an adaptation of a long poem from this manuscript. Brenda is currently at work on Bone Conduction, her latest and largest poetry project. Poems from it can be found in Listening with the Ear of the Heart: Writers at St. Peter's (St. Peter's Press, 2003).