2 New Poems

Soda Fountains

It springs back, Coca-Cola fizzy,
through moments I never
lived except as a split-screen
drive-in triple feature;

Sticky sweet the summer mist
of insert cut-clips scissor
snipping and hasty tape.

It’s not Victory Garden harsh:
bare root vegetation and
careful-measured state loaf
I took a strange fancy to
after years;

But something lively, pressed to
tongue and offered grand,
withdrawn too quick from base
and bucket.

It wasn’t wanting, the infinite
universe of pop-snapping sounds
that made up the glass work
spaces contained;

A red velvet shade that
takes over dreams, seeps
to the staining cracks
like billboard light

That still trails me on
street corners.

Montreal Rose

You make me think about
the steam bagel heat outside
of Saint Viateur on sidewalk slabs
before nights begin,

Being so unexpected, yet welcome,
yet wafting through a lazy
summer breeze with dodging
of bicycle spokes and
selling of cold drinks outside.

You come in like McGill
ivy, timeless in elegance,
traced too deep in impression
for an easy forgetting.

The way you harbour so much
of wounded worlds and
grew still, clanging against
city brick and northern waterfront
concrete.

You make me think of the
tussle motions that happen when
bars would close so late

and I’d switch Greyhound tickets
for early morning routes,
thinking something would stick
around against the wish-wash of rain;

You’re more like the flower garden
piece outside the modern art gallery,
though.

Most of all,

You make me wish I was
Leonard Cohen,

so I would have some worthier
words to send you.