This is how

purple and black speckled beans

lying near a dull brown leathery pod



tell us only a little



about this man, this woman, who planted

the garden in april, and who today



only sit across from each other

in the silence of this room



now that it is october, and



why the dirt under their fingernails

is stuck there after all this time.


By Stuart Ian McKay

Stuart Ian McKay is a member of the Writers Guild of Alberta and the League of Canadian Poets. Stele of Several ladies- a long poem, his first book, was published in 2005. He is a two time winner of CBC's Alberta Anthology. McKay lives in Calgary where he is working on his second book, a cognate of prayer, a series of long poems about people living with disabilities. "This is how" was published in issue Number 40 of The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature.

He wonders when it will warm up so he can garden again.