I love the way its rhythm and its rhymes
provide us with a promise, a belief
familiar voices at specific times
may modulate unmanageable grief.
I love the way we’re called to referee
the mind-heart match-up in its scanty ring;
how through it all our only guarantee
is that for fourteen rounds the ropes will sing.
I love the way it makes us feel at home,
the way it welcomes fugitives and fools
who have forgotten all roads lead to Rome
from shared beginnings in the tidal pools.
Life’s unpredictability defies
clean dénouement. I love the way it tries.
Catherine Chandler is an American/Canadian poet, teacher and translator. She holds a Master’s degree in educational philosophy from McGill University, where she has lectured in Spanish in its Department of Languages and Translation for fifteen years. Her new formalist poems and English translations from Spanish and French have been published in numerous print and online journals and anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and finalist in the 2008 Howard Nemerov Sonnet competition, Catherine is the author of a chapbook For No Good Reason. A member of the Greenwood Poets, she currently resides in Saint-Lazare, Quebec.
