When we had finished upstairs
we left out room and went down to the ground
and walked on the beach.
It was a gray afternoon:
the clouds after the storm
and the rocks which made the beach
and the waves pressed hard by the wind
were all different shades of gray,
and even our complexions were gray
because we didn’t really love each other.
Only the top of the lighthouse
was not gray.
It was as if, that day,
the paint store had said, “Sorry,
we are out of all the colours except white and black,
which you can mix to varying proportions.”
And the artist, aggravated,
had cut himself for a spot of red,
for a touch of significance.
We went to a place on the beach
where the salty waves came up
and pulled back against the rocks
with a sound
like the static of a bad radio,
like a cackling of a thousand little men
clacking together two thousand little rocks,
like the breaking
of all the bones
of all the corpses
of the past.
Third Place (tied)
Hart House Poetry Contest