From Borrowed Days: Poems New and Selected. Published by Cormorant Books in 216.

Through the winter months, the last months I shared
with family, I was swayed by the spell of old places:
old houses with gingerbread on Prince Arthur;
the Milton Street laundry’s sign, white board
with Chinese lettering over the door; Pine’s
Duckpin Lanes above the pizzeria at Park and Pine
by the underpass; from the 8 bus window
I could see the bowlers slide and throw
as I headed south, into the past.
I remember the students of that distant time
as a tide of ghosts flooding McGill’s grounds
and the McGill ghetto streets; the tide rushed past me,
and whatever thing the students dreamt
of reaching, they would reach fast, while my dream
happened two blocks down
in slow motion.
The Penelope, long gone,
was a haunt for blues and folk; flat-broke students
were left out on ice-grey pavement
stamping their numb feet before a marquee
without neon or flash—it said: Butterfield Blues
Tonight, Tim Hardin Next Week.
I looked three floors up
at a To Let sign wedged in a dormer window
in a row of windows. I looked at red brick
and the evening’s snow
falling through winding fire escapes,
falling from floor to floor
through the iron grille,
and the window glowed down
in the drifting snow
like a magic lantern projecting a life
I could occupy: a room with a ceiling bulb
and a string.
I pulled the string
and the light went off and went
on in this life
I’d found three floors up from Bohemia
on Sherbrooke and Aylmer; elated
and solitary,
unable to afford a ticket,
I swayed to the music
of Butterfield, the music of Hardin.