From Asbestos Heights. Published by Coach House Books in 2015.
As vast as the vastlands of this vast land, poet,
are you to yonder skies, breads and local cheeses.
I am grateful for libraries (iPad)
and poetry (iPad). Lorca’s line
‘La Clooney del bello Jorge sigue…’
is where George Clooney got his stage name.
Many tried to be ‘The Lorca of Canada’
but stopped when being ‘The Octavio Paz
of Sault Ste. Marie’ proved sufficient.
Entre la tarde Timbits y la noche.
Life in Canada is just bear attack
after bear attack. It always happens,
as incalculable as the number of times
Irving Layton used the word loins.
In the animal kingdom, no creature
kills for sport except the otter.
In the plant world, there are few things
as objectionable as balsam fir.
Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays c’est $100
pour voir Bon Iver.
Oddsmakers ask, what will happen sooner:
will a Canadian team win the Stanley Cup
or will Canadians develop new interest
in the novels of Robertson Davies?
The unmalled parts of Edmonton are cold,
my friend, and for reasons I don’t know,
the Cinnabon franchises in Montreal closed,
giving the city the nickname Russia.
Limited atonement, one of the five points
of Calvinism, is what Canadians
think of as ‘catnip.’ Heaven is the ground
where the Winnipeg Victorias still play.
I, of course, have never read Fifth Business,
because pop music is better. But, unlike
the speaker of Rod Stewart’s ‘Maggie May,’
I definitely could have tried a lot more.
