at the foot of a tree
a small squirrel
splayed sideways,
foetal

eyes closed
toes long, languid
tail curled a wrong way
fur the colour of
small moths,
dun

head caved in
ants roving over it
like raindrops over the windows
of a moving vehicle,
hesitant;

no taxidermist ever
came as close as this

almost beautiful
almost

"I just wrote it was about the physical impossibility of death in the mind of someone living. And the kind of way it went bubbada-bubbada-bubbada... You know, kind of poetically, and the clumsy bs and ps in it, and how it tried to explain something that wasn't there, or was there. I just really liked it. It really stuck in my mind."
· Damien Hirst, from On The Way To Work

The city, however, does not tell its past,
but contains it like the lines of a hand....
· Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

in freshly-poured concrete, fried-egg white
and politely cordoned off with orange tape,
someone has planted a handprint

between backlit plastic letters
that spell La Belle Province
sparrows refurbish a nest
with feathers, napkins, ketchup packets

on a somewhat crumpled twenty
someone has pencilled a thin moustache
on queen elizabeth's upper lip.

at Place Jacques Cartier
the fountain overflows with foam;
small children squeal
and clap, squishing fistfuls,
fashioning moustaches
and flimsy foam castles

a woman lifts a handful
and it drifts off, descending
to float across paving stones
boatlike, buoyant with light,
her handprint still in it

Maritime light is a fistful of dimes, clattering on wooden tables, bouncing silently off terrace umbrellas. The restaurant's panelled walls are full of photos steeped in sepia and overblown, boat-sails stark white, ocean strictly brown, horizon slightly diagonal as if the boats are weighing it down. No sky to speak of.

The umbrellas will fold when the light fades, as scheduled as flowers. Tourists sit in groups of two, four, six. They study laminated menus, squint, shield their eyes from the sunshine glinting off the harbour. A sign pleads Please Do Not Feed The Birds, but when departing diners leave behind unfinished baskets of fish and chips, the grackles and pigeons help themselves.

Standing on the waterfront, no one could convince me that water is colourless. The solid blue of salt water. Waves like veins just beneath the surface. I slip through a gate and walk on the lower part of the pier, the part that floats. Find my sea legs when a boat's wake washes by.

Seagulls' knees knotted like driftwood, like muscular ropes. Seabirds towing their shadows across water, across wood made gray and green by the sea. Birds reeling shadows in when they land, the strings invisible. Fishing line.

Invited to Bedford for supper, right at the end of the basin. Boats coast across the picture window, and a breeze rolls in from the balcony door. Oh listen, the loon is back! Go take a look. By the time I get to the window it has vanished. Did you know they can stay underwater for three, four minutes? says Roy. Sure enough it resurfaces eventually, closer to us than when it dove. Another appears, rounding a rock. I am handed binoculars and stand at the window entranced. Had forgotten how crystalballed the world becomes when telescoped. A sudden awareness of the sphericity of eyes. The loons sit distantly on the water like tiny soapstone carvings, white flecks chiselled into black plumage.

On the table a book by Michael Crummey; on the wall a print by David Blackwood. That one's a Lloyd Pretty, says Marilyn. Pickled beets with dinner, just like on occasion at home. My relatives, though long removed, are resolutely Newfoundlanders.

A long walk down Barrington with the shoreline on one side, stitched with smokestacks and cranes. Not raining really, except under trees when wind loosens it from leaves.

We glimpse blue sky, but only from the waterfront. The colours sliding across the surface of the water are richer than the unreflected world. Hard to find a horizon without a telephone pole, chimney, or mast jutting up in front of it. G. says, There are so many telephone wires that they spoil the view but not enough that they become interesting in themselves.

I left the house with a hand-drawn map but hardly needed it; unusually, here I am able to find my way intuitively. The water is an indisputable landmark. There are few distractions, and everything feels familiar. Halifax reminds me of Montreal and of St. John's at the same time. It is somewhere distinctly between.

My immediate connectedness is partly because I have family and friends here, and also because I am more willing to make connections. I feel myself slowly becoming someone who is easier to get to know. Less locked inside myself. Opening from the inside.

On my bedroom door here there is a small bolt that has been installed on the door instead of on the doorframe, so it does nothing. All my defences are the same way. Ceremonial, like a cannon in a public garden.

today i wanted to shout out loud HOW ARE YOU softly to myself
· bpNichol, talking about strawberries all of the time

A routine flight despite the apparent presence of John Stamos in the seat across the aisle from me, baseball cap pulled low. I am assured by a young businesswoman that it is him. We have a celebrity on board! she titters delightedly. In precisely the same tone, an authoritative prerecorded voice describes the aircraft's state-of-the-art safety features.

Oh yes, says Marilyn afterwards, they're filming three movies here, so that sounds right. She is driving cautiously through thick fog, "pea soup" as my uncle Roy puts it. He calls her Marny. I haven't seen either of them in years but they are driving me from the airport to Joyce's where I will stay. I recognized you right away, says Roy.

Goodness you look just like your father. Are you hungry? asks Joyce. Do you drink tea? When your father was here he drank a lot of tea. She makes us chicken sandwiches with tomato sliced thick, and lettuce and cucumber, on multigrain bread. I don't know how many grains the bread is, she says. It doesn't say.

Do you like partridgeberry muffins? You can get them here, but they call them foxberries. And of course bakeapples are cloudberries.

So here is the bathroom, she says, and here is your room where your father stayed. It is square and pleasantly sparse: a large bed in the center, a small closet, a mirrored dresser. A doily blossoms on the bedside table. These rooms look just like the rooms in nan and pop's townhouse in St. John's, I remark. Well yes, she says, it's an old house. Here's an empty drawer if you want to put in your clothes. See you in the morning.

In another drawer there is a tattered copy of The Treasury of Newfoundland Dishes, printed in 1958. I make note of some of the recipe titles: Grandmother's Apple Crow's Nest. Blueberry Roly-Poly. Marsh-berry Jelly. Never Fail Cake. Thrimble. Brawn. Baked Turr. Fishermen's Fish and Brewis. Bublem Squeak. Rhubarb Catsup. Bricks Without Straw. Kedgaree.

Its yellowing pages are sprinkled with bits of wisdom and etymology, colloquial sayings, and anecdotes.

Bakeapples: Yellow berries of delicious flavour, shaped like blackberries. They grow low down in bogs. In Scandinavian countries they are called cloudberries.

They are often confused by the stranger with baked apples, but, of course, they are not at all the same. It is said that when the French first landed on the shores of Newfoundland and found this unknown berry they said "what is this berry called?" or "Baie qu'appelle?"
· The Treasury of Newfoundland Dishes

Art fills up the tank in my head.

• Jason A. McHenry's 52 Weeks
  "It was a very hard thing for me to do."
• The Hall of Best Knowledge
  "Can one noble genius single-handedly educate all of mankind?"
• The Royal Art Lodge
  "Leave your problems in the sky."
• Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus
  "It purports to be a vast encyclopedia of a hypothetical land somewhat like the earth..."
• The Otis Artists' Books Collection
  "...innovative structures, excellent typography, and interesting content."
• 1000 Journals
  "My fascination with what people write on bathroom walls evolved into this project..."
• Nikolaj
  "I Went To Outerspace Museum..."
• Eggagog
  "THE BIRDS ARE ON THE PHONES..."

four in a morning
and my long walk home ends
exactly as daylight sets in,

sky that peculiar chlorine blue
that they paint swimming pools

while like a lost balloon, the moon
disappears into the atmosphere
to descend somewhere else,
possibly the sea.

darkness nestled deeply
in the silhouettes of curbside trees
along st-urbain. at prince-arthur
unseeable birds cheeped exuberantly;
i could hear them clearly
even as i crossed milton avenue.

earlier, while waiting for the metro
at lucien l'allier, a solitary tuft
of dandelion fluff wafted past my nose
and drifted into subway tunnel
in search of sunlight and favourable soil.

alone on ste-catherines
i watch seagulls wheel and strut
hesitantly towards innocuous pizza crusts,
my own stomach sleepy with
beer, sesame seed bagel, tzatziki.

i am finally figuring out
how to live in montreal:

always walk
either there or back, no matter
what the distance. furthest friends
give the longest hugs. never decline
an invitation, a drink, or anyone's couch.

saturday nights
are not for sleeping; see at least
one sunrise a week. park picnic tables
make excellent planetariums.

on sundays, a cup of tea
equals an hour of sleep.

touching the doorknob
turns morning on
like an antique radio
sputtering into popsong.