Scrivner

As a baby I carried you on my right hip outthrust

during your fussy hours of six until midnight.

I nursed you on the sweet yeast of the hops and grain

and fed you back-bacon until you grinned.  Oh

my Canada, you grow more imperceptible

each day and soon you will be another money manager,

polite and void.  For now, your pediatrician

is on a waiting list for an operation

and your father has no scholarships for he is not Metis.

We shall persevere dully, my babyluv,

as we always do, lickity clacking as the CP Rail,

as the absent rocking pacifies us past the pine trees

and into your middle age.

The hours

are stacked upon hours

like an altar of paperbacks in the corner of her study. 

She flips past imperfect pages

and hears the deep water drummers

marching to her again with their tinny tune

and boot buckles that jingle.  The clock opposite

sings on the warbler’s late afternoon quarter

and the curtains are washed,

every sheet folded, one last letter to be writ.  “If anyone

could have saved me…” she writes

and chews the pen nib thinking of saviors

and failures and ticks and tocks. 

“…it would have been you.” Staring at the copper bowl

of Blenheim Oranges upon the plank

she repeats, “It would have been you.”