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 Three Poems
by Alexandra Pollock



Hands


Hands – firm,
long fingers,
gentle, sensitive
under her elbow when he guided her
reminding her
without a word
to take her shoes off at the door.
one day in January long ago. 
 
Hands -
hands that had felt 
the dry cold of winter nights,
when too much work 
and thoughts had drained his energy. 
Too much time had passed
his hands were stressed. 
 
Now, months later,
once more strong and firm
when he wrote
and when he took her pulse. 
A man’s intelligent hands
- a doctor’s hands
With healing touch.

Like a bee

Her man was like the bee,
The bee loves to dip into the flower
It loves the honey –
But after a while
It flies away to another flower.

 2011 Chameleon
 
She is a chameleon, a loner.
She cannot cry.
Past pain has left tender, hollow spaces in her heart,
like the lacunae in her brain.
Hide! Change colour!
Adapt and blend.
 
Guard inner space,
blend – so others won’t see
won’t touch
won’t deepen old wounds.
                                                                
A stone in her heart
Had ossified – glazed over,
like the grain of sand
inside the oyster
that grew into a pearl.
 
Do you understand the pain
the oyster felt?
that pain is now 
part of the gleaming pearl on the chain
and on your lady’s ear.



Originally from Austria, Alexandra Pollock lived in Australia for 15 years and came to Canada in 1963. In1982, she graduated from Concordia University in Montreal with an MA in Special Programs in Education.  She taught English in the adult education program at Concordia, McGill University and for the Montreal school board, as well as doing some part-time translation (German-English).  From 1985 until 1990, she taught English at Kuwait University.  After the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, she returned to the Gulf and taught at the University of Bahrain University for the next four years.  She has been writing poetry and intermittently keeping a journal since she was 12 years old. 

Copyright 2012 Alexandra Pollock. © This work is protected under the U.S. copyright laws. It may not be reproduced, reprinted, reused, or altered without the expressed written permission of the author.