Luke’s Island, Nova Scotia

Bill Garvey

Its spruce grove tumbles like a gigantic game

of pick-up sticks. Dead, brittle trees

tipping over a ledge in resignation to the rising sea.

I kayak close to glimpse a harbour seal

sunning itself or poking its grey slippery head

through the surface like a sub’s scope.

I haven’t seen one in four years.

Water’s too warm I’m told by the old lobsterman

who lives just down the road.

He sold his boat, gear, license,

even his fish shack the bulk of which

the new owner replaced with plastic beams—

sea worms had riddled its wooden stilts.

I watched them lift it several feet higher where it stayed

much to the ire of neighbors down shore.

The view they bought is not

as perfect as before.

BILL GARVEY lives in Nova Scotia and Toronto. His collection of poetry, The basement on Biella, was published in 2023 by DarkWinter Press. His work has been nominated for The Griffin Poetry Prize and Best of the Net and has been published in journals throughout Canada and the US.