E.G.N. LAFLEUR

Huron

We are waiting for your death
from across the country.
We are in Southern Ontario
snow-haunted,
living well, driving
into the sleet to be with friends on New Year’s Eve.

Ponder the mysteries of life and death
on the highway,
a journey by car into the snow-scoured country;
in the bath.
Watch the mildew on the ceiling.
The bus is cold; the plane is hot.
Over Saskatchewan, turbulence.
I’ve lost the knack:
I can’t sleep on flights
even with a drink.

The dark, magisterial
at a gas station in the rain,
lights on the hydro pylons haloed in fog.
We are waiting for death to fly out of the sleet like a gull,
wings over us in the dark;
to cover the hills like forest unseen in the night,
laying everything plain.