Between classes I haunted vault of the
University of Calgary archives where I
worked as a grad student.
I lingered, always, by the first editions
of Plath and Sexton.
Like a good luck charm I’d run my finger
along the tip of a badger’s whisker
that Ted Hughes taped into a hand-stitched
chapbook shelved next to an early edition of
The Colossus.
One day I will run my fingers along the marbled spine
of the box at the Lily Library
that contains Sylvia’s hair
shorn in childhood,
hair that never felt Ted’s brute fingers.
I wonder
if Ted plucked those whiskers from a badger in the wild,
its thick musk heavy like Sylvia’s memory.
But no,
Ted couldn’t touch a woman without cowering
into his study,
never mind a wild animal.
He always did like to pluck bits and pieces
from the dead as they lay helpless.