Week

While I'm putting finishing touches on Natural Cause: The Poems of Stan Still, Stan's looking for his last word, maybe his last word ever. Maybe ever will be that word. (Dad used to end his letters that way: As ever.)

Somewhere through his window, in that sun just rising over the Bow valley, in some post-conceptualist junket, somewhere in his body, in the eyes of three elk cleaning up his apple peels, in the dream of his mother surprising her siblings by showing up at the dinner table, in that next cup of tea--he'll come up with his last word.

I'll give him a week.