From the highest window of my house on Winnett
This one, behind the cedar,
I wave my adieux with a scrap of white linen
To my poems heading out toward Lake Iroquois.
And I’m neither glad nor glum.
It’s the fate of poems, I figure.
I wrote them and must present them to the denizens of Toronto,
because what else can I do
Like the flower can’t fake its colour
Or the river hide its current
Or the tree claim it can’t bear fruit.
There they are, poems, already at Vaughan Road, trudging to
the bus stop, and I feel a kind of pang
Unexpected, but physical.
Who knows who’ll read them.
Who knows what hands they’ll fall into.
Flower, I was cut out for being seen with the eyes.
Tree, my fruit must be taken by mouth.
River, all my water flows outward, away from me.
I give in, and feel a bit happy,
The joy of someone who’s just tired of being sad.
Go, go, git!
The tree falls yet its bits litter the parking lot.
The petals droop but the flower’s dust is forever.
The river enters sea and its water recalls a window on Winnett.
I pass by and dwell: my whoosh
against yours.