SAFE IN THE UNDERCURRENT, BY JAY MILLAR

Across the street in the dark, the park poem has
begun to hibernate. The word grass pales; the word
leaf fades to brown and disappears. Some words
migrate south or pull their bodies back into the earth;
there are a few words that linger but they are
obfuscated by damp and snow; some migrate south.
Others stick around and try to say other words. Most
of them are words for trees. This is how it happens
year after year: the words change, grow older, leach
some primal form of energy.

Eventually I will go outside and this poem will be
gone. Not just this poem, but all poems. The world
will be somehow naked, stripped bare, an inhospitable
habitat. I will have nothing but my role as an ego
trying to cry out in the wilderness and nothing to
speak with but the words that were once something
entirely different.

Jay MillAr [photo credit: Reid Millar] is a Toronto poet, editor, publisher, teacher and virtual bookseller. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which are the small blue (2008), esp : accumulation sonnets (2009) and Other Poems (2010). He is also the author of several privately published editions, such as Lack Lyrics, which tied to win the 2008 bpNichol Chapbook Award. MillAr is the shadowy figure behind BookThug, a publishing house dedicated to exploratory work by well-known and emerging North American writers, as well as Apollinaire's Bookshoppe, a virtual bookstore that specializes in the books that no one wants to buy. Currently Jay teaches creative writing and poetics at George Brown College and Toronto New School of Writing, where he is also the co-director.