ANIMALS IN WAR MEMORIAL, LONDON
Of all the animals carved
in stone and bronze, the horses
stay with me. Back home,
immersed in the meadow,
manes waterfalling down their necks
as they graze, their sad eyes
reach me, the shadows
still there. For they’ve seen our past
and sense the things we can’t —
the indigo musk
of a coming storm, the ocean
all the way across the prairies, the woman
weeping in the farmhouse at night. They know
our fears, our well-kept
secrets. When they sniff our hands
for apples and oats, they breathe
our souls through our skin.
So it’s easy to imagine their grief
on the battlefields, waiting above their fallen riders
even as bullets stippled their flanks
and shells exploded nearby, dragging
death behind them through the muck
like carts of artillery and supplies, their bodies
buried in mass graves. I saw them
everywhere: in the cobblestones
sleek with rain, the grass thrashing with wind.
When I looked down from cliffs
to the waves below, the foam
on their coats and mouths
washed and washed across the rocks.
* First published in Grain: Vol. 47.2, Winter 2020
WHY I MISS THE PENNY
The Royal Canadian Mint stopped producing and distributing pennies in Canada in 2013 due to rising costs relative to face value.
—Canadian Bankers Association
I miss the smell, warmed-in-the-hand copper
like a small wound that has healed.
And the colour — not the silver or gold of riches,
but the russet of terracotta and clay,
minerals streaking the banks of the creek
we swam in as children. I miss
penny candies at the corner store,
doll-sized tongs counting out
green frogs and blue sharks
into tiny paper bags, fuzzy peaches
sloughing sugar on our tongues
as we rode our bikes home. I miss
the Take-a-Penny, Leave-a-Penny dish
on the counter beside the cash register,
unguarded donations. The trust that we would take
only what we needed, and pay it back someday
when we were able to, in another place,
another dish, this code of kindness
we all understood. What will become
of wishing wells now, with fewer coins
tossed blinking to the bottom, fewer
wishes made? What will fall from heaven
with the rain and hail,
the snow? My son will never stop
to peel a penny from the sidewalk
and slip it into his pocket with his treasure
of pebbles and poplar leaves.
Even if I tell him, he won’t understand
what the penny meant, the simplicity
of a single cent — that elemental sum
worth one sweet, worth the relief
of one person digging through wallet or purse,
the thing they are missing provided
again and again. I miss a universe
of strangers saying, Here, take this,
holding out their hands.
* First published in Arc Poetry Magazine: Issue 106, Spring 2025
THE EMPTY ROOM
I don’t know much about you —
only that your mother left years ago,
just like mine, and nothing was ever the same.
The musty diary beneath the floorboard
began to tell us more,
but one page was too much
and my father burnt it.
We all have secrets.
The room I chose must have been yours —
so empty that when I opened the door,
air rushing in caused an echo.
One sticky summer evening,
as day dissolved into the horizon,
I found boxes hidden in the brush.
The cardboard was eating itself
and wild roses were tangled
among your possessions:
eyeliner, perfume, a teddy bear,
and a single pill bottle — empty
like your father must have been.
He kept everything, trying to fill that space
only a child leaves behind.
I know where he found you
and why that room was the only
empty one in the house.
Maybe the air wasn’t rushing in at all
but your soul rushing out.
We took your things to the dump,
but you won’t leave. You slip through
the door I keep closed at night,
whisper across the floor
softly as a cobweb.
If all you want is to be heard,
I’m listening now.
I’m listening.
* First published (in a slightly different version) in Force Field: 77 Women Poets of British Columbia, Edited by Susan Musgrave (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2013)
Rebekah Rempel 