Four poems for Stuart Ross’ sixtieth birthday

rob mclennan

1.

Each of your birthdays, in turn, highlight

such universal constants: poodles, pigeons, 

sparrows,

haircuts. Writer going to hell! The name
telegraphs, withers. This amplitude of highways

that bear significant weight across lakeshore,

and the inability
of metaphor. I open

my mouth.


2.

For such an occasion, one centres the mind.
We reconfirm altitude,

amplitude, position: Amherst

and Hardscrabble; the Upper Canada
Academy. These strongholds

of Family Compact, and a garage
packed with chapbooks. One late, late night

in 1979: you began to formulate an outline,
calculating digits

in your father’s office. The light
of his photocopier.


3.

In the mid-nineteenth century, the largest centre
in Ontario. The city of Cobourg,

and the stretch of two centuries to finally evolve
from quiet lakeside

to quiet lakeside. What the poodles in the state of Oregon
and Wisconsin combined

had dreamt into being. The conspiracy

that followed. What it had most likely been
all along.


4.

Happy sixtieth birthday: neither words
nor mere numbers

but outlaws

and vaudeville stars, performing
on an endless, perfect stage. The concession stand

is raining. The books have gained sentience,
and can’t sell themselves fast enough.

Poodle.





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. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He is “Interviews Editor” at Queen Mob’s Teahouse, editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. 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