Watermarks

We exist at the pleasure of our great familiars, chief among them, water. Water is: Source. Sustainer. Old faithful. Or so we thought, generation unto generation. Into our complacency comes present danger to the planet: alarming announcements of drought, famine, thirst and flood.

  Against the growing apocalyptic clamour, Watermarks raises an anthem to water's many guises. The work tours through water's family album. Page’s poems make their way upstream, follow icebergs across Davis Strait, picnic on the shores of Lake Huron. One suffers through a miserable winter political campaign and arrives at a famous funeral. In travelling the world or staying home, the poet pursues the tender work of picking up old stories to see what might lie hidden. The designation "By a Lady," assigned to 19th century women’s paintings, created one such obliteration.

Oceans answer to their own call. Springs rise unbidden from earth’s inner store. Ice scrapes away granite. Snow covers vast territories. Water marks all it touches. It hides, it cleanses. Page's new poems are tales about the human life force sandbagged against the deluge. To enter the poems is to enlist a wider field of vision, and to play.