The Los Angeles Times
is going to be read
by a man named Carlo.
He will die carrying his wife
(who cannot use her legs)
to the bathroom.
I will sit in the sun
writing about them.
My dog will die,
my hamster, my turtle
my white rat, my tropical fish
my Moroccan squirrel.
My mother and father will die,
and so will my friends Robert and
Derek.
Sheila will die
in her new life without me.
My high school teacher will die,
Mr. Waring.
Frank Scott will die,
leaving a freer Canada behind him.
Glenn Gould will die
in the midst of his glory.
Marshall McLuhan will die
having altered several meanings.
Milton Acorn will die
just after putting out his cigar
on my carpet.
Lester B. Pearson will die
wearing the bow tie of Winston
Churchill.
Bliss Carman will die
before I learned about his loneliness.
The Group of Seven will die
having made some places famous
where I used to camp,
where I pitched my tent
and gutted fish
in the loving sight of Anne of Carlyle.
My brother-in-law,
the most eminent of all Frequent Flyers,
he will die a True Son of the Law
and leave my sister 2 million miles.
It doesn't matter
that all these deaths occurred
long before I prophesized them.
History will overlook
the tiny glitches in sequential time
and concentrate
rather
on my relentless concern
with matters mostly Canadian.
Terrace of Medical Building,
November 15, 1999
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