I’ve worshipped him myself, climbed the days of
the week
like a ladder, with every rung bringing me closer;
and if when I got there it was never
quite as good as I had hoped,
afterwards it always seemed to have been better.
—Alden Nowlan, “The Weekend God”
Nanny says Nowlan lumbered. She calls on Christmas, the year after Grampy died, and I tell her I got the Selected. It’s one of my first poetry books, the one from Anansi, the one with the bland blue-grey fish house. For this Maritime Poet, the cover demands a bland fish house. “He was a big man,” Nanny says. “Your Grampy and I would see him lumbering across campus when we visited for functions.”
