“Kitchen Window” by Rob Ruttan

Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Kitchen Window” by Rob Ruttan.











Kitchen Window



By Rob Ruttan







By middle August the sun



starts to swim more quickly across the sky,



leaving a late afternoon’s



cool touch of melancholy on the skin.Goosebumps



like a calendar,







black edges around a darker blue dotted



with southbound birds in the fading upper reaches.







My mother doing the after-dinner dishes



would look out the back window & sigh.



“There goes another summer”, she’d say. She hated the north,



its short seasons of hope



followed by pitiless nights



at the bottom of winter,



timbers of the house snapping



In the iron cold as night fell.







The boy in the backyard sensed something emptying



as those cooling winds of late August



turned like a cat’s ghost



around his ankles.



In the kitchen window, like a chipped picture frame,



he’d see his mother look her tired reflection



in the eye



and he did, yes he did,



notice that gaze.











Copyright © Rob Ruttan



Rob Ruttan hails from Thunder Bay, in the People’s Republic of Northwestern Ontario. He now lives in Barrie. He has published in The Malahat Review, Event, The Nashwaak Review, and his photography has appeared as cover art cover art for Orion and Event. He is a retired high school teacher.











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