2 Poems by Roy J. Adams

 I&thou

Crush together
Chunks of clay
Shape of you
Shape of me
Add water
Reshape you
Reshape me
We’re hotter
Than potter’s
Fire
You in my body
Me in yours
Forever

(From a poem by Guan
Daosheng, 13th century China)


Soul

Fish-like she inhabits
Deep seas and plies
Among obscurities
Threading her way
Between boles
Of giant weeds
Over sun-flickered spaces
On and on into gloom
Into cold, deep, inscrutable

Then, suddenly
At the surface
She sports
On wind-wrinkled waves
Brushes, scrapes,
Kindles herself…gossiping

Adapted from text in Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Bionote

Roy J. Adams, for many years a university professor specializing in industrial relations, labour law and human rights at McMaster University and the University of Saskatchewan has had work published in literary magazines in Canada, USA, UK, Ireland, Australia, Singapore and Germany. The author of one book of poetry, Critical Mass, and a chapbook, Bebop from Beau’s Caboose, he is a full member of The League of Canadian Poets.