A couple of Augusts ago Home Despot had a table of azaleas priced to clear. No tags or flowers, so a mystery bag of azaleas.
This May the azalea I picked out bloomed a red so out of orbit with the rest of my garden (so antisocial, so discourse-indifferent) that I tried to unload it, but no takers.
Then October rolled around, and the leaves turned to a more pleasing red. A system of reds and orange.
Recent winds allowed for debris I might have otherwise climbed a ladder for. Blue spruce, cedar, fir, holly, which I gathered and saved for Xmas door decorations.
I wanted to have something on the door in time for today's anniversary of the 1989 École Polytechnique Massacre, an event as unbelievable to me as it is horrific, and must never be repeated.
Yesterday morning I composed my decoration, first on a table, adding to it after its hanging. This year's addition was a dried out hydrangea bloom intended to hide the string I used to bind the other elements and to my mind looks as beautiful in death as it does in life.
ANGELS
as if risen under street lamps, this morning’s field
a frozen dough, sodium yellow: We can walk
backwards in the snow, you say, fall and flail
the angels there to save us
MATRILINY
gently cupped, the Polish dolls
babcia, staruszka -- she can be both
and more: the smallest first, then her mother
her mother’s mother, her mother’s mother’s mother
IN SCHOOL
again, labouring today
the lesson in place, the report drafted
no protection from oblique questions
students birds in search of seed
FLOWER KISS
you can get closer
don’t stop at your nose
put your lips into it, whisper
stamen, anther, pistil, stigma
Yesterday's walk to the dentist, all bundled up. Winter's light blue sky, a low sun, more glare than heat.
A reflection of myself in the window of an empty business, careful over a lumpy patch of boulevard. So this is how a penguin does it?
I made it to sixty without a single non-wisdom tooth extraction of my adult teeth, but today it will be the top right rear molar, next to where one of those wisdom teeth was.
My dentist, who I started seeing in 1972, says the vacant area will require some building up before he can even think of suggesting an implant (the answer is already no). In addition to a pellet of bone-growth-promoting collagen, he ordered a side of bone chips, all of it to be dropped down the hole made vacant by my extracted tooth, which now sits in a repurposed Protec case and, though it has a pretty porcelain crown and was my first root canal (of seven), I will not be sharing its picture on websit.
An anti-biotic was prescribed, as was codeine because I always find a way of asking for it. In place of brushing in that area, chlorhexidine gluconate, given to me by the receptionist, to be used until the stitches come out next week. Sweet to see that the label is handwritten. Even sweeter to see that the word swallow is spelled "swollow" (rhymes with hollow).
