Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume Four
November- December 2025
On That Forbidden Evening, poems by Kathryn MacDonald.
On That Forbidden Evening
it was late dusk, neither
light nor dark but pearly
earth and sky. We ducked
under the bathing suit
line and startled ourselves
and a Northern Saw-whet
who kept to her perch
on the cord.
She was as tiny as my hand
in yours on that evening
after the sun had fallen
over the horizon.
In the dusk
that was neither day nor night,
a mellow whistle rose
from deep inside her downy breast
filling the silence.
Our held breath
flowed silently into her song.
Willow Dream
I run through wet grass
toward the bluff, rain
slashes my skin, wind
whips hair and
I cannot see
the willow –
only a gap, a hole,
where the willow should be.
I lean over the edge –
green leaves dance
in the wind. I grasp
sumac, lower
myself –
willow-roots rise,
exposed, heavy with earth.
I shut my eyes and stumble,
open them to see the tree
naked of leaves, its bark
bone-grey, its trunk
an arc over water
reaching
Albinoni’s Adagio
Ten years –
soon eleven –
dawns
and dusks
merge
while all the sorcery
I conjure
fails
to resurrect you
Hauser’s cello
fills the air
with cavernous
yearning.
Still I live.
Hauser makes love
to his cello
as you did to me –
passionately
tenderly –
salt on our lips
honey whispers
in the room.
Albinoni’s Adagio
rises
falls
swells
into fullness
slowly
cascades
into silence
to haunt
each blue
breath and still
I live.
© Kathryn MacDonald
Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S., Ireland and Indonesia. Kathryn has a new poetry collection to be released by Frontenac House, Spring 2026. Liminal Spaces is a chapbook anthology of ekphrastic poetry by Kathryn and three fellow-poets (2025). She is the author of Far Side of the Shadow Moon: Enchantments (poetry chapbook, 2024), A Breeze You Whisper: Poems (2010) and Calla & Édourd (novel, 2009). For more information: https://kathrynmacdonald.com.