2 New Poems

Constructions

Impermanent, cigarette smoke trails, lasted as

trace spire on walls thin a wax wrapping

yellow teeth colour, stewing Jazz Age

scent, heady breaks from mouths of

mushy men beneath the half-lit lamppost.

The neighbourhood's bully boys had spray-painted

some vulgar thing on the building's arcade arch,

black-green paints, edges fuzzy as old

photographs, scratched as aged vinyl copies,

it said a flash-thought of you.

Far across time's reach, there is nothing in our

town so grand: it was all built on 60's confidences,

now pushed around in rain-soaked tatters,

carriages of neglected babes flown far from

mother's breast. It was a vision in stuck-on siding,

you stood out from the rain gutters.

Difficulty of Goodbye

Closely-held, for a pause-brief moment,

slipping from view as a rusty pane's water,

blank wind cast-backs rattled the door screen,

your arms crossed as two pallid, underwater

latches, was the last time we touched.

It was months going with a windy cascade,

down-course from the grassland basin of the Ottawa

Valley, the loping slope came as walls of jail

stone, keeping cross the one-way streets dotting

in bureaucratic tie fashions, laminated ID cards.

When you came back from the frozen

midlands of the English countryside, accented-speaking

and all that, it was red-faced calm, drained

dry from criss-cross flyings, I came close

for another time, the cold comfort was

same as always.