Prick of the Spindle: Poetry: Tucker: Assignation Stanley Park

When I arrived, your whole body
was stretched out in the indigo water, sunset
sliding down your darkening stomach.

The longer we stayed, the more of your jewelry
you pulled out and hung in the air around us.

Your body you left naked of these small lights,
knowing the pull of your negative space
as the sky blackened from right to left, the last light
diving to its incremental death beneath your feet.

So you pulled the cold in over both of us,
a blanket under which our breath became visible:
mine a pearly, momentary mist; yours the bridge,
the trees’ jagged tips, the light-gashed water.

Diane Tucker grew up a singing, acting and writing child in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her first book, God on His Haunches (Nightwood Editions, 1996) was shortlisted for the 1997 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, an annual award given to the best first book of poems published in Canada. Her second book, Bright Scarves of Hours, was published by Palimpsest Press in September 2007. Her poems have been published in more than fifty journals in Canada and abroad. Her first novel, His Sweet Favour, is forthcoming from Thistledown Press in September of 2009. Diane lives in Burnaby, BC with her understanding husband and two beautiful teenagers. They all miss their spotty dog named Doxa, who had to go too soon.