Making It

The car sputtered & steamed up Highway 5 from the Third Line towards Clappisons Corners at Highway 6, rising westward up the long side of the escarpment to crest above Hamilton, I said the diesel injectors were clogged but it could be something worse, threatening us with a stalled engine while a torn heater hose bled coolant over the motor & vapourized into miasmas that wafted through the dashboard heater vents as we climbed. I sustained the fuel pressure & the core temperature rise through the ball of my foot as shoe & pedal fought for continuum, while beside me you held your hands in your head and tried not to break down before the car: we held chaos at bay even as the upward nudges of the heat gauge verged on eruption & the fuel stream squeezed molecule by molecule between the gap sustained as forward motion while my will and your prayers crested that long slope under mounting pressure, our breaths held until we thought we'd failed on 6 in the northward drive when sputter & steam & fume came to a stop in Puslinch, where I stood in the dark night beneath the one light in the hamlet and coaxed the baked coolant scented car back into life & we made it home, only united in relief once we had parked in our spot behind the row-houses on Grange.

Julie, No Longer Sixteen

The remembrance of quiet places in the heart where long ago love
still lingers in the warmth of strawberry blonde hair and the lithe desires
of gawky youth all brought to mind in the opening of an email.
And there you were, full blown into middle age like me, your life lived
in the thirty six years between high school and my response,
delicate history, cherished, even as the cruelty
of the past which arose from my inability to love you or anyone back then,
is as painful to me now as it was to you then - when I could do no more
than what I did, except now I'm allowed at last to say I was cruel because
I was damaged, and that I really did care except that I was so unable then.

These restorations of the heart's long sorrows dissolved through shared memory
are manna, gifts from love for love.

Selected Works book Launch

A collection of my poetry & prose will be launched on Monday Oct. 6 at the Alma Gallery at 133 Wyndham St. Guelph from 7-10. Since I didn't start out to be a mob writer, I wanted to publish some of my earlier works, & so have selected a volume's worth. Not that I expect them to sell as well as the Morgeti books, the poetry market being what it is. Still I'll be hosting a party, with improv music & other spoken word artists as well as reading from the book. Everyone is welcome. Being an odd sort of human being, I believe my poetry provides a window into who I really am. And don't worry, I am an accessible poet, so you will not be treated to an evening of obtuse reflections or intellectual abstractions. A good time will be had by all.