Four poems for Ian McCulloch

rob mclennan



1.

North of the Mattawa, Trout Lake,
grey-eyed clear and distant; a moment

which, seemingly. The beginning
of the long dash. Time, and

endless.


2.

Accelerates: the arid drift
of Nipissing, September.

We are caught now
in the mandibles of surviving.

What light
on remaining colour.


3.

Culled, from geologic excess.
If I grow weary

of being resilient. Airlifted, how
the dawn unwinds.


4.

The efficiency
of syllables. The Trout Lake monster,

northern gateways, settlement. A pantomime
of balance, condition. This scrap

of bare earth.









Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com