Debility Poems: Tim Lander

Tim Lander was a poet, England-born.
He’d studied at ULondon, then came here
in nineteen hundred sixty-four.

In Vancouver, he made chapbooks. Later
he’d found himself in Nanaimo, playing
penny whistle at Krall Plaza.


I don’t know how I have these chapbooks.
I don’t know if I’d ever met him,
but I must have (I think I must have).

Two years ago, he had left us. Last year,
every evening his daughter put an IV
in my arm. I brought sweets for the nurses.


We had laughed and laughed then, as liquid
dripped into my vein with a poc
poc poc.