Stephen Grant

Interstices

‌     Filtered through intervening time,
fleeting seconds march to B minor
cadence, written on the sky, ephemeral
and vaporous. Overmatched by a fabulist
god, she of gilded wing, lapping purpose,
we have no recourse but to surrender.
Shades of ancient greens and ancestral
yellows glow from sizzling logs, keeping
us as warm as bears in a cave. Paintbrushes
at the ready, the artist dapples in penumbral
shadows, the steady hand betrays no doubt.
Time has stopped having meaning. Dinner
and coffee can wait while the paint is smoothed
out of the tube and onto the canvas, just in
‌     time for one last stroke.

Stephen Grant is a Toronto writer and poet, specializing in the bittersweet, the intersection of love and loss.