June 2026

poetry

Big Water Reveals Itself

by Erin Wilson

Big Water Reveals Itself 


                                                                                                                                                   a deer slowly crosses the bay 
                                                                                                                                                     shoulder-deep through snow 
                                                                                                                                                                                       twilight

 
You never knew this before, but far out at the edge of the ice, that aquamarine horizon, it is what you've always wanted, the perfect piece to fit the emptiness in you. 


Is it the sound of gulls? 
    yes  


Is it how ice travels a window? 
    yes 


Is it how sustenance lives equally in the green leaf and the leaf of paper? 
    yes 


Is it how one word meets silence? 
    yes 


    It is the map to the edge that leads one to the centre. 

    It is the bell of your body ringing true on air.

    It answers every question of your eyes. 


                                                                                                                                                     twilight, how small this deer 
                                                                                                                                                            crossing the frozen bay 
                                                                                                                                                                     towards big water 

erin-wilson
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.
1968 - 2026

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