April is National Poetry Month, and to mark the occasion we'll be sharing some of our favourite poems from collections we've published over the years. Today's poem is "Charlo—Ski Trail" by Tammy Armstrong from the collection The Scare in the Crow.

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 "Charlo—Ski Trail"
by Tammy Armstrong

 Out of the pine gloom
the fox pushed ahead of it all

into the sky’s domed blare,
the field’s fire opal.

White on white —
no colour wrapped the scrollwork of trees

along the Bay of Chaleur.
I waited,

stood chilled in my place.
Listened into the lost.

All beanbag and bunting,
the fox stitched and re-stitched the eyelet track,

the soft jag a hare had maybe left
in its swoon

before its cutty-shadow found the tree-well depths,
dived into the beneath.

The field was fire opal —
erasure in the open.

A crow tweaked its gunsight
and found only a girl in the middle of it all,

calling down the field.
The quartz in my voice

followed the syrup runs —
iced maples lacing the earth

in an off-beat claque.
Louder.

Waiting for that fox to return.
Waiting

while the wind had time to scrawl
so many glyphs in its passing.

Grab your own copy of The Scare in the Crow by Tammy Armstrong here, or check out the rest of our poetry collection here.