Notes for a Sad Phoenician

You are the question to all my answers. I was an
echo without prior sound until you, silently, wrote,
“I am counting on my fingers to remember you.” If
only you had got my name right.
— Robert Kroetsch, Excerpts from the Real World

You once said you learned how to drive in Grande Prairie, Alberta. This is not what I wanted. The day I was there, doing a reading, all I could think of was you, in the opposite direction, the rear-view.

Because, eventually, all lines intersect, you told me. Pushing buttons, I dialed. I am writing a letter. I am exploring the holes I have discovered between the letters of your name.

We are translating seasons. The snow is cut soft. What was spring will be spring again. Rain anticipates bulbs.

Dislodging a fear, your island, the blue of it. The red of your portrait. The blue of my portrait too, that you coloured.

The way you walk the in-between. Love.

When you talk in your sleep, you said later, I am not to listen. A sad Phoenician weeping passion.
I am adamant. I give nothing away.

These flowers are lost in the wind. Another ski resort goes bankrupt in the Laurentians. Without you, I become the coldest winter on record. The soles of my boots are soaked through.

The High Level Bridge is a waterfall, distant. Weather asks where you come from, but my answer keeps shifting, like the weather.

I turn the light on in a room. I turn the light on in a room. I turn the light on in a room.

I asked you to bring me a story made out of glass. It was not meant to be ours. It is thicker in places than I imagined.

I wanted to rhyme blue, not the word but the colour. Your island is waning, in shadow. My hands and my feet cut themselves on your beach.

Outside my bedroom window, a moon in the grass. It glowed faint, but steady. You were driving your car over the High Level Bridge. You were coming in waves.

Did royal blood flow through the veins of Samuel de Champlain? We live in a Metis country, wrote John Ralston Saul. First we take Manhattan, then Calgary. Toronto.

I had a dream made of lemon cake. I was inventing a new vowel out of the shapes of your mouth. The phone rang. After weeks, we were finally waking up together, again.

“Farms of landscape/ between us./ Maybe why/ we both hanker/ to dance/ a rhythm only/ insects can play?” – Lea Graham

Desire, like Pubwells, has a limited shelf life. I am waiting to prove myself wrong. Then I did. I returned around midnight to retrieve your grey scarf.