Sunday, July 04, 2021

Four poems for Michael Dennis

(1956-2020)

1.

A blue fade: tarantula arms
across Yasunari Kawabata’s

sleeping beauties, petals; these
diminished leaves, another

white wall, poem. Where you sketched
Wayne Gretzky; lifting out, and up

his latest record-breaking win.

 

2.

Canvas on hardwood; two bare feet,
a claw-tub bathroom and

expansive bookshelves. A period
of morning, mourning

across every battle, the nature
of desire.

 

3.

The rain, you
wrote, it fell

like rain.

 

4.

What day of the week did you write
your poem about spiders? Where

did light fall, and in which
direction? I imagine

you by third-storey window,
facing Bank Street, possibly

nineteen eighty-six, or eighty-five,
cascade of businesses long emptied

along the Somerset to Laurier corridor,
dust clouds tunnelling the absolute.

  

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