and this was toronto.
somewhere: a tuesday.
one of those dull
and hot days in late
summer. I wasn’t working.
I was sitting in the park
near my apartment,
reading a book
from my pocket.
and there were squirrels, employed
in their running about –
there were squirrels
all over toronto –
and then there was also
a hawk. it was flapping,
its wings making holes
in the grass, hurried along
like a fast escaped kite.
it didn’t get any of them;
just blew about, a little breeze-caught,
right in front of me
looking huffy and somewhat
embarrassed. I could have
touched it, if I’d put down
my book. the dark feathers,
the fast moving head
and the eyes. then it was gone
and the day was quite warm
and there was traffic moving
and a streetcar going up bathurst,
the colour of an old
can of cola.
and people were yelling
from the park’s public
swimming pool
and people were yelling
on the street.
we were somewhere,
and something
had happened.
The sort of thing that happens
4pm. Sunday
in the Phoenix Park back
and the north and a pub
called The Hole
in the Wall. drinking
a warm can of Guinness
like coffee. watching the deer
as they run between cars.
this is the thing –
what you see in the park
on a sunday. energy springing –
anxiety given
a shape. and we’re by
the back garden
to Áras an Uachtaráin
(that’s the seat of the president
for American readers)
the sort of thing that happens
in Ireland sometimes.
like a lizard
scraping skin
over gravel,
or like peeling
a difficult orange,
I cut through linoleum,
dragging the knife
along down the edges
of cabinets.
this is a saturday,
eight months in a rented
apartment – we weren’t quite sure
what the contract allowed us
to do, but messaged the landlord
and hated the kitchen.
his easy response
with the usual english: I could not
give much less of
a fuck. I finish the trim
and call over my girlfriend
to help me in drawing
from body. it comes up
with an ease
which surprises the both of us,
upsetting my coffee
and bucking like water at stones.
frees with a scrape
and a sickening sucking
sensation, but the tiles
underneath are well-
cared for, and this
is a good afternoon.
the corners are stained
and discoloured by glue,
though the centre
is clean and bright yellow,
solid as surface, with some
minor cracking,
like a bone when it breaks
through the skin.
The houseplant
I slept late then
often, woke up
and made kitchen-
coal coffee. walked
to the bedroom,
useless and dry
as a plant. there was
something growing.
something awful
was growing. my girlfriend
had work and my friends
were all working; the dog
just as tired as I was.
I checked messages,
job listings, made
another coffee.
sent applications
and didn’t hear back. there was
something growing. a seed
in a shed in a garden,
on a dusty wood shelf
by some gloves.
summers would come –
I did know that.
and winters – and I
knew that too.
he took a room
in an apartment building
in the vaguely spaced out
no-man’s land
somewhere south of Smithfield,
past the Liffey,
near the Liberties. a hillside
which lurched on, downward
toward the river
like a mildly drunken misstep
on a badly levelled street.
and he overlooked
the brewery
and the clearly stretching
sunlight, which fell out
from his window
toward the northside
of the town. no shadows
but his own, marking time
and getting longer, like a toddler
slowly growing
until 10.
and he’d dearly
loved the dog – he had gave it
to his sister – but he’d left the plants
and bookshelves
and goldfish with a note;
perhaps the landlord
wanted them. and occasionally
a message: she was doing well
in India – could probably pay
his passage, if he’d maybe like
to come? inspired by the light
which struck the buildings opposite
he took to painting pictures:
his girlfriend, still in India,
and writing him
short messages.
