Heather Bourbeau
Reclamation
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Gum nut path, unmapped rivulets. (Reformation)
I want to follow.
Hear the cow, hear the owl I cannot see. (Faith)
I want to find.
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I had a dream. My ex, long dead, came back to life as the young man he was when we were in love. I
am thrilled. I hold his cheeks in my hands. I say over and over again through tears of joy, “You are
alive! You are alive!” as if this incantation will make it true, will mark this miracle, will crack my heart
open again. (As if I were not happier without the man he became.)
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Somewhere there is a chainsaw, raising Cain. (Heretic)
I want to shame.
Removing the wreckage of the storms. (Judgment)
I want to repent.
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I learn “reclamation” comes from Old French “to call upon, to seduce, to call back a hawk.”
Peasants in medieval France could be hanged for keeping hawks. Nobility might seal the birds’ eyes
with needle and thread to help tame and train. Today, I watch the red-tailed soar and perch, dive and
watch. Unclaimed.
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Gravel overtaken by green. Fecund, so fecund. (Temptation)
I want to touch.
Wartleaf, bramble trellis, Pacific poison oak (Trepidation)
I want, I want, I want to return to the whole, to the land, to the glove.
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Heather Bourbeau’s award-winning poetry and fiction have appeared in The Irish Times, The Kenyon Review, Meridian, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Her writings are part of the Special Collections at the James Joyce Library, University College Dublin and have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her latest poetry collection, Monarch, examines overlooked histories from the US West (Cornerstone Press, 2023).