small town

a dog sleeps in the sunlight
someone's playing harmonica
I'm waiting for something to happen

a '56 chevy rounds the corner
the banker singing a hymn
his arm signaling the turn

four crows on the roof
I'm thinking of a carpenter
hauling shingles up the ladder

the mid-afternoon is silent
and still as a photograph
in the unearthly heat

everything's a secret
grandmother in the garden
her apron stained with raspberries

a cat stretches on the top step
then slowly descends
in to the world

a bicyclist blowing
through the shrubs
his legs thrown wide

bells are ringing
it's another wedding
bride and groom at the door

what others have said:
"How to speak of that particular muscle and urgency in Patrick Friesens' poetry? There is always a poetry beyond the words, a music the longing lines reach after, overrunning the sentence, a place where grief and celebration aren't separable and the dead are all ears. Time and again the reader is struck, not just with amazement, but with gratitude."
(Don McKay)

"If less is always more in poems then Patrick Friesen has found it. There is a new simplicity here, as narrow as ecstasy, as thin as sorrow. Friesen's poems are rare and fine and we are blessed by these tireless sweet words, these whispers in the dark."
(Patrick Lane)