Susan Musgrave lives off Canada’s West Coast, on Haida Gwaii, where she owns and manages Copper Beech House. She teaches in University of British Columbia’s Optional Residency School of Creative Writing. She has published more than thirty books and been nominated or received awards in six categories⎯poetry, novels, non-fiction, food writing, editing, and books for children. The high point of her literary career was finding her name in the index of Montreal’s Irish Mafia.
Judges’ Citation
The sheer humanity and gift to show our fragile, broken selves is nothing less than prayer, as spoken in Musgrave’s Exculpatory Lilies.
The sheer humanity and gift to show our fragile, broken selves is nothing less than prayer, as spoken in Musgrave’s Exculpatory Lilies. That she brings us to the sacred ground of loss and grief, and then lifts us toward our own humility is a ceremony. A ceremony wherein we must bow down our heads to the fragility of all we know, the darkness and light we all must carry.
Selected poems
by Susan Musgrave
Good Friday, the day they delivered
that sad bouquet, was the day our cat
ran out on the road and failed to look
both ways. I’d stashed the candy eggs
under the sink, in their pink raffia nests,
safe amongst the household poisons
where the kids had been warned not to go:
on Easter Sunday before first light
I stole outside to hide the loot: the family
of bunnies in gold foil, the high quality
chocolate you insisted on buying—
nothing’s too good for my girls! The lilies,
smacking of humility, devotion, had been
for me—your way of saying sorry, I can stop,
I will lose the needle and spoon today
but I was finished, I was through, said sorry
had been your default setting since the day
we vowed I do. I think, now, I was cruel.
The cat darted out, hit the car, staggered back
as far as our front gate; for a second, I thought
she might have been stunned, nothing more,
though the dribble of blood at the corners of her
mouth was a small grief with a life of its own.
I buried her at the bottom of the garden
where I had tossed your exculpatory lilies.
And where I picture them still. Each new day
above ground is a hard miracle, you wrote;
I hung on every miraculous breath you took
as I stood outside your door at night, dying
to hear you breathe. In the end, it wasn’t me
you turned to, but God: wasn’t love meant to be
more pure than faith, more sacred and enduring?
These days I lean heavy into the wind
and the wind’s blowing hard.
Copyright © 2022 by Susan Musgrave, Exculpatory Lilies, McClelland & Stewart
Exculpatory Lilies
When I go to the river with my trouble,
and sit under the big trees, I see my girl again.
Her dress is the colour of soft butter.
Her hunger tastes of whiskey and rain.
Behind us is darkness, and darkness lies ahead.
The worst kind of pain is to miss someone
you’ve never known, and worse, never will.
The emptiest days are loveliest; only
people with desires can be fooled,
and I have none.
Copyright © 2022 by Susan Musgrave, Exculpatory Lilies, McClelland & Stewart