Wait! Now, go back to the beginning and touch each line in turn. And, if you like this sort of poetic puzzle, make sure to check out For 20 weightings.
So, Margaret Atwood has joined other Canadian feminists in calling for the anthem to be edited back to its original. I like Margaret (and feminism), but I have to disagree with her. The line in question reads “true patriot love in all thy sons command.” They want it to read “in all of us command.” But being commanded to feel true patriot love is a bit much. Feelings can’t be commanded, and I’m not big on the whole patriot love concept either. Sorry, Margaret, but I’d rather just stick with an anthem that sticks that one to the sons.
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“It’s more gravel than grass, just as I remember it,” said Mrs Seabolt as the Seabolts wandered disconsolately along a hot little street alongside the Jardin de Luxembourg.
Today on a run I almost stepped on a squat little robin. He hopped out of my way just in time and I stopped to take a look. The first trip from the nest? The first flight? He was still getting the knack of it, and his momma was not happy with the interest I was showing. She screeched and squawked and fluttered past my head, and I got her message. See, she had more than herself to consider; that’s why she stood her ground. That’s courage, not attitude. And I did what all reasonable animals do: I ran away. 
It’s July the First, and the Canadian woods resound with the
call of the wild. That’s it—that high-pitched
scream; the water’s still cold up here.
Every decade after my happy first, the Tooth Fairy has bestowed a new, unwelcome dental truth upon me: in my 40s, via a root canal. An uneventful one, as these things go. Only six hours passed between the throb that woke me up and the needle that dialed me down and the little saw that stole the pain away forever. I didn’t even have to get a crown. My tooth was still my tooth. Till yesterday, when I brought a loose thread hanging from my sweater to my teeth and realized I could no longer feel how hard to bite. 
I’ve been writing these stories since 2001 and have, at last count, polished off 817 of the things—81,700 words—or something like a whole novel’s worth of disjointed thought.
Word today of the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library (or as Dubya calls it, “Lie-Berry”). It is a remarkable honour for a man who darkened few library doors in his youth. Had events unfolded differently, this might not have been an issue; after all, his focus was going to be domestic. Well. Unschooled in world affairs, he had to rely on his national security “dream team”. Perhaps if he’d read more books he’d have formed his own opinions; he might never have invaded Iraq, or based his post-war strategy on a flimsy pop-up book, Democracy Made Easy.
Photo: Sari Garden by L. Leclair
Guilty as charged, I’m a little shallow. But I bet you also I’m not the only one. And is it really shallow, when you look at a photo of the apprehension of a guy who allegedly – though his aunt in Toronto doubts it – pressure cookered a marathon and wreaked havoc on a city and ran over his own exploded brother with the getaway car (awkward!), and is now intubated, sedated, and reviled by his uncle, is it really shallow in this instance to look at the guy and find the first thing comes to mind is, “Hey, he’s really ripped!”? 
What a shame that the idiocy of two boys has monopolized the news this week. Twisted and unforgivable but nothing that folks in the West Bank or Pakistan or even Europe haven’t been dealt on a daily basis. They grieve and vent and then move on. But because this happened in America there’ll be ribbon campaigns and concerts and anyone who looks like my son will be under increased and fearful scrutiny. That is, unless they want to buy a gun at Walmart. Forget looking in space for it, the God Particle is alive and well and living in Congress.
“Who wants pie?” Mom demanded after we’d cleared supper.
I inherited some surplus baking supplies from a pal whose daughter worked on one of those elimination cooking shows. Every time I crack open the jar marked “rice syrup” I wonder how it all went wrong. When did it become entertaining to watch people cook like they were bailing water from a paper lifeboat? What must all that anxiety taste like? Give me an hour of Julia, Martha, the cagily Sinovescent Yan, or even the avuncular but dodgy James Barber anytime over witnessing some idiot sweat into his Saskatoon berry reduction while another bigger idiot rips him a new one. 
The Smithsonian tells us we share 98.8% of our genome with chimpanzees, but that hardly reveals us to ourselves in any new light. Now, from Belgium, comes a study showing we have 96.3% in common with annelida oligochaeta, the common earthworm. So very many nuances of human nature are explained in this fell swoop. The lingering popularity of the name Ann. Our affection for undergrounds, whether inhabited by the French Resistance or by hobbits. And of course, the disarming comforts we feel around tubes. Think tube tops, toddlers lulled by toilet paper rolls, and jagged mornings smoothed with Euro caviar.
We’d eventually take over a house the bank had repossessed, that someone had left in a hurry, taking the stove and the fridge on his way out and tossing what food he still had in the sink.
The second time through, we still weren’t entirely sure, but that certainly didn’t stop me from taking along a few things to clean up a house I didn’t yet own, gathering up the worst of the garbage, soaking the kitchen with Lysol, and doing what little I could to get rid of the stink of the previous owner before the heat kicked in.
«Es-tu mal au ventre, maman?» Every year on her birthday, mom would ask her mother if her stomach hurt. Mémé, who produced a bakers dozen, never got the significance. But most of us remember birthing our babies. Twenty-two hours of labour took me from insisting I deliver in a salt-water bath, the air replete with the sounds of whales and patchouli-scented vegan candles to maniacally screaming “Get that fucker out!” By the time the catheter arrived, I saw yoga and sheep breathing for what they were: chimerical hippy hogwash. But I’d have done it again in a heartbeat.
Photo by P. E. Reid
This week I worked on the Kettle Point reserve and stayed overnight in Sarnia. Since I’m directionally-challenged, finding my hotel became an Escheresque exercise of tootling, asking for help, doubling back and asking again. Yet, I didn’t mind because I was almost home. Lambton County isn’t much different from Tecumseh, and I’d forgotten what it all smelled like: The cornfields, the humidity, the freshly-cut grass. When Kathy and I sold Peaches and Cream from the back of her mom’s truck down on Manning Road we charged a buck a dozen. Thirty-five years later it goes for $5. Still a deal.
When Zeno finally landed himself a girlfriend, he soon learned she liked to take things slow. It was three dates before they held hands; months before she let him kiss her with his mouth open.
