revised

Reading In Bed

As it happens I did not buy this book

of collected poems in St. John, New Brunswick or

Charlottetown, P.E.I.  I didn’t pick it up

in Yorkville on a long weekend in Toronto,

nor was I delighted to spot it in a window display

on a stop I didn’t make for coffee in Kamloops, B.C. 

No doubt Halifax has its share of bookstores,

none of which I’ve visited on the road

to North Sydney to catch the ferry to Newfoundland,

where one imagines happening upon a salt cured,

weather beaten mom and pop clinging to life

quayside in St. Johns.  

The border with sleep lies just up ahead

where soon I’ll be borne across

on thoughts of the boats of these poems

lifted on the rising tide of the U.S. dollar,  

Billy Collins buttoned up for the night

inside a tent pitched upon the calm seas

of my chest.