micahemerson.ca

All things good, beautiful and true.

Category: Select Poems

  • fracture

    In mid-November, 2025, I broke my left foot. I don’t suggest it.

    I felt the crack before I heard it break
    like something holy giving way.
    Bone surrendering to the pressure,
    the same way people break on the inside
    When they pretend they’re okay.

    They say healing starts with silence,
    But mine started with a bang
    a sharp reminder I’m not stronger
    than the weight of broken pain.

    But the truth is in the fracture
    in the splintered, jagged line.
    Sometimes things must fall apart
    before they can realign.

    So I’ll wear this break like a witness,
    let the ache do what it must.
    ’Cause every bone that learns to mend
    teaches the spirit how to trust.

    And when the boot came off,
    and I stood up straight again,
    I’ll remember:
    even shattered things
    can find their strength
    and live.

  • Yellowknife

    Yellowknife

    Part 1

    I walked
    to the end of time.
    To the very edge
    of the earth.
    ‘Til my feet
    bled in the soil.

    I went
    into the wild,
    where the sun never sleeps,
    and the moss becomes your bed

    I came
    to listen.
    To hear the song
    creatures have been singing
    since before we had words.

    And I found you
    in the dirt and silence,
    as surely as you were
    in the dust
    and the noise.

    Oh great Shield
    you sleeping giant.
    You footstool of heaven.
    Granite Goliath
    with your back to the stars.

    I went to the edge of creation.
    Just to see you
    at the center
    of it all.

  • Jordan

    Jordan


    I touched the water,
    cool and restless beneath my hand.


    Wading the eastern shore,
    I felt the current resist me,
    but You called me upstream,
    into waters I feared to cross.

    You carved a path where none had been,
    turned depths into dry ground.
    I removed my sandals,
    laid down what I once carried.
    I stepped in.


    The river rose.
    And I did not drown,
    I am new,
    swept into another land.

    You touched the water,
    and the river caught fire.

  • Lilac

    You arrived in a morning hush,

    silent and sure, while I still dreamed in shadow.

    I saw you flutter in the morning rain, then tilt your face to greet the sun.

    And I was suddenly moved

    memories budding bright and sudden

    Of springtime love: fragrant and honest, renewed each year, but lost in autumn and the snow.

    I once searched for you

    in sleepless nights, tossing in the cold.

    But now I see, you were always there, just outside the garden, waiting gently with me, like flowers before they bloom.