Chance encounter

A deliberate encounter downtown yesterday with a friend led to a chance encounter or two in the stacks of VPL. I alighted on Gerry Gilbert’s slender May 1931 poetry bookeen.  It is a weather-treasure. Each poem commences with a forecast, followed by a reportage, illustrated by a weather map. I reclined last night and read them aloud, incapacitated by my previous night’s adventure to a very crowded, noisy gathering that I had to flee from and trundle over the bridge, dizzy as a duck, with my nose sadly in a bag.

I also landed me hand upon Betty Lambert’s Crossings (sp?), published in 1979, what I have read which is the early chapter has fishing and Campbell River and a raised house, among a few too many invocations of the moon. It appears to have been a divisive book when it was published. I am v intrigued by Betty’s prose (a certain elasticity to it!) and shall plough on before I utter another word on it.  Chancing upon it reminded me of George Ryga’s slim novel … Night Watch? (night bar?) oh God damn it Night Desk! which I read last year and must read again.

And Mr Fraser continues to tap dance me down the beyond. Does the garden path on this one ever end? Will I ever finish this piece? I have so delighted in it, it has sent me soaring off to the place where I appear to make no sense about it whatsoever. But still on. Past the cabbages and the sleeping strawberry plants, I see the garage roof in sight, so up on top of it til a swift drop … and escape. Po-t’etre.