Never in our selves, but beyond.
          Rosmarie Waldrop, Blindsight (1998)

Marriage: a port
in the storm                     or the storm,

                    enough
      to pulverize a bullet

      ethics           of presence,
          on winter,

          on form,

*

From              tense        
to future tense,

   , rock      to stone

to rock, a boundary

rendered         ;     past, a leather suitcase

    , an apprentice         forward,

candlelight       , against the hearth,

*

Economic: a combined heart,      this

machine in time,    the

    , scent of peach, or

anything pure,

*

To write: on time           , exculpatory
   , when

the bough breaks        , whether, whither   private

       , perspicacity

: to field a knowing          across
              this nigh-impossible,

      , instability,           , like a prelude,

      made finally     , stable

---

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.