the green notebook : , regarding a snow day,

Todayis a snow day, with school buses cancelled for both children, as well as Rose’sbasketball tournament. Her team was scheduled to land at Ashbury College, aprivate school in Rockcliffe Park. The late Matthew Perry (1969-2023) wentthere, you know, as did Ottawa poet Max Middle (pseudonym of Mark Robertson).Up to 10cm today, online sources suggest. I should probably move the car up thedriveway, for the sake of the snowplow.

Todayis a snow day. Each school sends an email, and Christine forwards, to make sureI saw. She is in Edmonton all this week running courses for work. Edmonton, farwarmer than here, at least this week. Above zero, she says. Yesterday, we wereminus twelve, which was an improvement over the prior few days. Once again, Ipick up Etel Adnan, her Surge (2018):

I also hear the airflowing with it, its unbroken surface leading one’s imagination to more water,more destabilization, more wind.

Overthe past couple of weeks, I’ve gone through four drafts of proofs for mycollection Snow day (2025), a book out as soon as we clear allcorrections. A sequence of sequences, held by the title sequence, one composedat the prompt of another snow day, back in 2019. The snow fell and it fell andboth children remained home.

I’mall for a snow day. I’m tempted to return to the extended prose poem, as I didfor the original “snow day” poem, six years ago. How different or similar Imight play with the form. Where might this go.

Our young ladies in theircorners, on their devices. They are eight and eleven years old. The snow,falls. Outside, the snowplow. If everything, seasons. The snowplow, attends.The ground, and the groundless. A stellar cold. For why, the lament. Alta Vista:snow descends in straight lines. These shadows, blue. The rules of the game.Nothing rests. What the tides don’t permit.

Yesterday, a cluster ofbirds.

Rose is attending acraft. If anyone, to witness. Can I have this box. I want to make something outof this box. Yes, you can have that box.

*

A temporality. Emails,from both of their schools, from the snowplow company. It is here, it iscoming. Snow. How many words for it. Remain in your homes, they say. Our youngladies, relieved. Blizzard, onding. An outcrop of flurries.

The air, a crispness. Asharp edge. I brush layers from the car, abandon sentences. Return to thehouse.

Mid-morning,I tell the young ladies to put away their devices. They spend the rest of theday taking turns coming in to request things or register their complaints ofthe other. By early afternoon, a silence. They are in the dining room, quietlyplaying a card game.

AsI wrote on social media, responding to another: my poems these days seem to becomposed through me stepping directly into the middle of the poem and pushingout in every direction, until I am finally able to free myself.

Iused to write poems that began at the beginning and moved their ways forward untilfinding the end. It seems I do something else, now.

*

JeffWeingarten prods me via email, reminding me that I agreed to write a blurb forthe collected letters of John Newlove, which he’s been working on for moreyears than he would probably wish to consider. Apparently the collection is dueto land in print this year. After a few back-and-forths, we agree on this as myblurb for the back cover:

It is good to hear John’svoice again through these letters, back from those days when letters (wellbefore the advent of emails, text messages) were a stronger means ofcommunication between writers, between poets. As Weingarten offers in hisdetailed introduction, this is where battles were fought, shots were lobbied,generosities offered and questions answered, all of which John composed inthoughtful detail. Every gesture was for the sake of the work. Weingarten putsthe spotlight on an important Canadian poet and the context in which heexisted, across a wide-ranging literature.

Winnipeg poet and lawyer Chimwemwe Undi is announced as Canada’s 11th Parliamentary Poet Laureate. From her Scientific Marvel (2024): “All that distance, /built.”

*

Thesnowfall eases, drifts. By mid-afternoon, the streets and sidewalks plowed,some more than once. More than a few times. I convince the young ladies to getdressed, and we prepare to head out for Aoife’s ukulele lesson. Our first andonly outing.