From Lake of Two Mountains, published by Brick Books in 2014. Lake of Two Mountains won the 2014 Governor General’s Award for Poetry.  

Bobby grew up into a boy.

Wrong decade. He

left for the War, Second World,

returning years later,

a box-camera snapshot in hand:

foot soldiers, himself and four friends

lined up in front of a broken-down fence.

Boys drowning in greatcoats.

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At the cottage Bobby slept in a cot on the screened-in veranda,

half in, half out of the house.

Old army blanket, and all night

the wind off the shore raked his hair.

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Mornings, he’d sprawl

on the wharf or sit in a lawn chair,

slathered in baby oil,

                                        remembering what?

His fiancée married while

he was at war. He never did.

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Later—the house finally his—he glassed in the porch,

wintered in his red velvet chair,

cradling the snapshot: five soldiers, all boys,

in the palm of his hand

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