a fruit bat, a marauding cat
and an elderly dalmation

skirmish all night for territory
at the top of a telephone pole

i wake to a vague restlessness
about the dalmation

raindrops
slide down the window

each one an upside-down  pocket
of sky and honeysuckle blossom

last evening’s book
about living underground

in berlin
the second world war

what one had to do
to survive

at some moment before dawn
it only took the weight

of a single added drop
to bend the honeysuckle branch

and break it
it will never flower again

Claudia Coutu Radmore’s French-English bilingual collection Your Hands Discover Me/ Tes mains me découvrent, (2010, Montreal) was followed by Accidentals, (2011, , Ottawa) which won the Canadian 2011 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her series sea oyster leaf, sea olive: Fogo was short listed for the 2017 Malahat Long Poem Contest.