3 Poems

January 1

In your language, there is illusion, but there is no hope,                                      In hope, there is illusion.                                      And in illusion, there is the stuff of language.                                                – nathalie stephens this is the begun but then it is / the long hangover an unsteady cough i am entering into an unsteady gaze of nothing new ottawa winter, sunrise, the year extant an authority of pinstripes, roses * an entry of north an entry of thinking the thaw that held us last night all & then this morning a 5am blinding light when i returned, i might not leave all day would you love me as i am archibald lampman is dead & so his kate, his figures in stained glass so graceful in other fields a single a single-made what you cant unhear a bullet January 8                                   Stand up! Stand                                   Suzanne is walking by.                                             – Leonard Cohen it happens writing, “suzanne wears a leather coat” the long touch of granite is lost is not lost there is wet snow all along the entranceway her boots are never clean in the prairies last week, threatened wind chill of fifty below & who says ottawa is cold clifton joseph on elgin street from toronto where he has the lake & so much further south in the prairies, where there is nothing to stop the wind or slow it down from the rocky mountains to sudbury or sioux lookout a leather coat in this weather at least it can break from the wind did suzanne wear anything else i wonder on ste catharines street or the isle of hydra i am losing track of my contemporaries on a saturday morning in the rideau centre waiting for my daughter & her mother suzanne her memory is marble it hasnt changed in eons not even erosion can touch her sing me to sleep; i am four days remembering nothing the tim hortons coffee is too hot still to drink what happens lay down your marble tea; this is not about death some things forget us, perfectly in time January 10                                   Sometimes a surface lands on the surface,                                   a pelt on bone.                                             The inaudible resides over                                             the word you crave.                                             – Elizabeth Robinson a sympathetic mode, between here & the east sun rises, sets quitting, closing, moving to bagdad , whats all this then a shift in some

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