It's 2 degrees above zero in the little northern city by the sea, but my living room smells like spring, thanks to a clutch of pink hyacinths on the table. Saturday morning quiet drifts through the house--Tom asleep, young people asleep, cat pacing upstairs and down, pushing his paws under doors, wondering when his friends will wake up.

I don't have any particular plans for the day, other than taking the kids out for an oyster and poutine feast this afternoon. Meals have been particularly fun during this visit. Paul and his friend are joyful eaters, and that of course is a cook's delight. Yesterday's dinner was a mussel boil, with much happiness ensuing. Tonight we'll have mussel risotto, stir-fried bok choy, and mint chocolate chip ice cream, and everyone is looking forward to it . . . though who knows how hungry we'll actually be after all of that poutine.

I haven't been writing this week, or even reading that much . . . distracted by cooking and visitors, yes, but also I've given in to mental sloth, which I guess is understandable. Now and again, I let myself off the hook. If I'm being reasonable, I do recognize how hard I drive myself into my reading and writing, though mostly, in the midst, I feel as if I'm not dedicated enough.

Here's a poem from the new collection. A number of the poems in the book are fictions built around the sensibility of various imagined characters, and this is one of them.

Sound Archive

 

Dawn Potter

What funnels through his brain

this morning isn’t last night’s hockey

game or bad thoughts about his ex-wife’s

lover or even worries about the tumor

sprouting on his cat’s belly; what he can’t stop

hearing is the creak of the katydid in the maple

outside his apartment window, the exact same

song that has stopped him cold every August

since he was five—one more relic in the reliquary,

this hullabaloo crammed with insects, freight trains grumbling,

alarm bell clang-clanging at the crossing, tires sashaying

down a humid street, dove wailing on a satellite dish,

slow drip from a clogged gutter, scuttle of dog toenails

on a concrete sidewalk, faraway shriek of a ripsaw,

dump truck wincing into a crowded intersection,

flap of a chopper looping a hospital, and still

that endless clang-clanging at the railroad crossing,

and now a Harley revving, and a nail gun, bam-bam-bam,

bam-bam-bam, a noise like a heartbeat,

pounding, pounding, a thud he never escapes,

hammer of blood, hammer of lead.

[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]