HOW TO KNOW A SINGLE TREE
  
 After entering
 a small parental forest
 for some reason
 I see an Australian desert
 and hear a story
 about a woman
 who sought the shade
 of a single tree.
  
 I don't know if she found it.
  
 Inside the actions of Autumn
 leaves choosing their colours,
 choices they only share with
 the branches left behind.
  
 All of the shaded floor
 covered by what the sun once
 shared with flows underground,
 the keepers of the length green
 dominated how the wind sounds,
 roots slowing, heat going somewhere.
  
 I see my hand choose the one.
  
 May bark always feel friendly,
 how it tells the man in me
 this is the one, others then disappear
 so I too sit leaning against
 a lone tree, ending any loneliness,
 all of the forest
 gone somewhere
 to offer another explorer
 the chance to know, to breathe
 and thank it for the air
 each breath, now, is alone with.
  
  
  
 THE CROW'S ECHO
  
 I've come looking for a poem
 and found a white eraser
 left on the sidewalk.
  
 What a child has left behind
 leaves me pondering,
 "Do I know the sky?"
  
 Crow, I see now
 a difference in reliance
 as I call and call.
  
 Being between empty buildings
 my voice is stopped
 not by the appearance of you, no,
 leading one of my ears to a door,
 leaving each caw sounding as if
 it echoes through what I
 peer into and would say
 are rooms and a hallway.
  
 I stop and smile, briefly,
 ask out loud, asking someone,
 "Try to imagine the crow's echo,
 try to, just once."
  
  
  
 WEE AIDEN
  for my grandson
  
 Arrival, finally, no more womb
 no more being under the waters
 mother could grow you within, the
 capsule where you began to hear a life
 other than the constant pulse as
 the heart in you grew to tap, to
 soothe all yearnings for a fainter light
 seen more and more as your eyes
 were given sight, led the mind you
 began to trust, wait to hear from,
 scenes containing figures moving,
 those around you waiting, you a center,
 you an anticipation, you alive, you
 watching like a relative behind a wall.
  
 Welcome, finally, no more journey,
 no more being under skin, hidden,
 unborn, mother has brought us to a door,
 mother wants an introduction I want,
 I await a signal from both of your parents,
 I await a tidbit of news on how you smile,
 or what finger you point at the world,
 gurgling, quiet at night while a space
 in the air becomes that spot where we will
 always find you, living, questing, wise
 to accept the position of being next,
 being curious enough to seek my embrace.
  
 Villa Victoria
 Truro, NS
 May 5, 2005

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Chad Norman lives beside the high-tides of the Bay of Fundy, Truro, Nova Scotia. 

He has given talks and readings in Denmark, Sweden, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, America, and across Canada.

His poems appear in publications around the world and have been translated into Danish, Albanian,  Romanian, Turkish, Italian, and Polish.

His collections are Selected & New Poems ( Mosaic Press), and Squall: Poems In The Voice Of Mary Shelley, is now out from Guernica Editions.