Honest Ulsterman - Article - After Blind River from June 2019 Edition

June 2026

Posted in: June 2019 Edition

After Blind River

Erin Wilson

~a letter to my husband

Seeing this morning with a bit of clarity.

Things begin to coalesce. Something dear, the glinting and glimmering.

If once there was a dark dense whole which became broken, shattered,

then it stands to reason that those parts, animate now

in their separateness, might shift, move, seek out

a way of being, if not whole again, then momentarily harmonious.

Things shine when they are successful with harmony.

Yesterday, beholding the edge of water again,

the waves moving toward land, the sun --- not always,

for the imbued moments had passed before I left ---

playing perfectly upon the horizon and the wave-crests,

there was no doubt.

Erin Wilson

Erin Wilson is from an island community of a couple hundred people. Her poems have appeared in Cordite Poetry Review, takahē magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Channel Magazine, The North, B O D Y, Verse Daily, and elsewhere internationally. The title poem from her collection, Blue, won a Pushcart. Her work will appear in Best Canadian Poetry 2026, and she won a Silver Medal with the National Magazine Awards in Canada. She lives on Robinson-Huron Treaty Territory, in Northern Ontario, Canada, the traditional lands of the Anishnawbek. She is most at home amongst trees. She refuses to carry a cell phone.

More work by Erin Wilson

After Blind River [poetry] Escaping into Glenn Gould [poetry] Delivering a Birthday Cake to My Daughter in a Distant City, I Listen to Thomas Quasthoff Perform “Der Leiermann” from Winterreise [poetry]

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1968 - 2026

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