Encore Literary Magazine is extremely proud to have permission from the executors of the estate of the late Richard Outram to present work by one of Canada’s great poets. In the months to come, poems by Outram will be periodically featured here, thus helping to keep alive the singular voice of, in the words of Alberto Manguel, “one of the finest poets in the English language.”

Aerialists 

Nothing, of course, from the first, but weighed against

Such parlous folly: family; friends; and the appeal,

Not lightly to be discounted, of common sense;

And last but not least, vertigo, dreadfully real.

High in tumultuous oaks, through the wind-threshed tops,

Squirrels play frenzied touch-tag at dizzying speed,

Flinging contortions, black synapse across bright gaps,

One after the other; driven, if not by our need.

With a heavy deadening shudder a helicopter

Batters above us: by instinct made much afraid

One freezes against the trunk from the vast raptor,

Like a hide nailed to bark, flattened and splayed.

Another is lounged on a bough to reveal of a rear

Foot the long, delicate sole: and I did not think

Strangely to be disturbed, to discover it, bare,

Unexpectedly intimate; a naked, vaginal pink.

O lately we leaned free from the buoyant crown

Of the poised radiant Tree and forbidden flew

One void to another and Everything did Abound

Held in our perfect error perfectly true.