Upon the Bed of Fresh Salad

Well, this is the last of you, fat January. You have been a good father this year, and shall get more than coal when the real father returns. It is a good day to give out keys, to allow new friends into old places. Welcome, new. You are my Assistant Editor and we shall work well together. Yesterday a woman came to me in this same room, locked out of the study hall beside. Went to the bathroom and locked her coat, her purse, her test. She told me her whole story; I could have asked her anything, but yesterday I did not have a key. For you there is a key, but of course there is also a twenty-five dollar deposit.

The Daily Bread Cafe. Saw Rob from creative writing and sat down to chat. Ordered the chicken fingers on garden salad. The chef wanted to know who had done my surgery. An odd thing to ask when preparing a salad. He said he had been in a car crash and had to have major facial reconstructive surgery and he knew this surgeon, great guy. Chicken fingers were moist, and the dill dip was great, like a dog in heat. Salad was a little dry.

Back in the St. John’s faculty lounge, we are treated to a class with Meira Cook, another fabulous Winnipeg poet. We each have prepared a presentation on metaphors and draw forth the distinction of the dead and the extended, and some talk about metonymy. And Erin brings up incarnation. And Meira’s sweet, South African/British voice reading the words of Robert Kroetsch:

A dark as dark as a dark.
A moon as moon as a moon.
My lust doth rage in this
of mine old body.

And there is time for one, and there are times for two, but in these times there is no metaphor; there is only flesh.