The Poet

I drove to Montreal. I was going mad and had to escape the lake. I wanted to hear people speaking another language, wearing different clothes. I wanted not to know what was around the next corner. I rented an apartment in the downtown core. The face of Leonard Cohen was partially visible on the side of a scruffy building like the top half of a Wanted poster. I was on a high floor and mostly faced the mountain. The white walls were dirty but the views were impeccable. The forest had iced over. A stuccoed building with a red clay roof like something that might preside over olive groves in France. The university spilled knowingly over the lower slopes like an old rockslide. The air felt thick, as if I might step from the balcony and be supported, as if I might find a new level. I ordered food in stacking boxes and left the blinds open. As night fell, steam mushroomed up from somewhere west of me like a poisonous gas. I read deeply for a while of Turner’s sea paintings, how they were increasingly, blindingly white, like a sun exploding, like the blank face of poems in winter.