Resurrection
lay on the old brass bed that I was conceived on
wooden windows wide open in early March
I'm stifled by the heat of a Hysterical old furnace
no insurance
even though the wiring
here is as old as my greatgrandmother's china
the old brass lamp my mother gave me
lights the room with flame shaped bulbs
I have a bandana wrapped around my wet hair
surviving the heat wave while most of
montreal is still wearing wool

An elderly man who smoked too much went into the hospital
that's how I inherited the cheapest apartment in this city
I'm making peace with his memory
as I try to reassemble myself in this place
I have a hope that this new place
will fuse the gaps inside me

washing and renewing my found items
from the mile-end alleyways
A fine Hassidic boys coat
the 40's chest of drawers
Letters, poems from friends, drawings from my students
I swore never again to let my belongings molder
and weigh me down
everything everyone must find its grace
Gifts my mother bought me as a child because I wanted them
a small clay flute an old wash board I saw someone playing at a folk festival

Does everybody have to hold themselves together with homemade hinges
sometimes I think that makes for the finest chains
each link cut and bent out of ore
that was once moving beneath the earth's crust
sometimes I think it makes me like some piece of faded wrapper
adhered to a pole or a box because of moisture and evaporation...no less mysterious but no resale value
Wrappers labels branding uh huh
I think my gaze is widening the more flattened I feel
the walls become three dimensional

Its hard to know what perseverance brings
except that we are still here
I comfort myself that true unlearning
is slow 10, 15 years in the sculpting

I've adhered to a code that made me into a fixture
Afternoon hard air of a dusty city spring
shoppers
prospectors looking for gold on the tundra
i see my mortality walking
all that life pushing up under the concrete

I know renewal is as instantaneous as a new breath
as the sun's rays
as plunging into fresh water
the infusion of loves touch

So i wait and do the maintenance
unpacking discarding assembling
marveling at whats included
magnificent intersections
of sentient beings
a web of chains surfacing

and realize that though faith has sustained me
there comes a time to break it
like a piggy bank
hoping if memory serves me right
what i put into that void
has evolved as does crystal as does mould
into what
I am so desperately
and patiently waiting for

I