Half a Poem
I am the only Jewish writer on PEI.
Okay, I did meet one other and I hear there’s even a third.
Vos macht ir, boys? Where’s the temple?
I figured as much.
So I guess I’ve traded in my forty years in the desert
for a few acres of wooded land beside a salt-water river.
So I guess I’m supposed to start worshipping
trees now and slaking my thirst with Manishewitz brine.
So I guess I’ll have to ask my four friggin’ questions
at a New Glasgow Lobster Seder
with a fifth question added for good measure.
Why is this claw different from all other claws?
So I guess I’m supposed to start from scratch and make it up as I go along.
Instead I turn on the television
only to find a documentary on Irving Layton.
There he is sitting in some senior’s home,
his hair wind-swept and white as a Montreal street corner in February.
His eyes crossing inward and his sadly confused smile.
There’s his ex-wife combing the hole-riddled Sinai wasteland
of his mind for any drop of memory.
Hey, Irving, remember what Cohen said? There are no diamonds in the mine.
Hey, Irv, remember how you used to scratch your balls in front of the whole country or how you took Christ’s foreskin and squashed it onto the end of your boxer’s nose like it was a piece of gum you were caught chewing in class ?
Tell me , Irv, who once said that a poem is only half a poem and the ear
is the other half?
Irv? Hey, IRV?
IRVING!
I may as well be talking to the television.
I may as well be the only Jewish writer on PEI.
I may as well start looking for the other half of this poem.
(HALF A POEM originally appeared in All Rights Reserved 2006)
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