This poem is taken from PN Review 140, Volume 27 Number 6, July - August 2001.

Mr Multitude

Robert Minhinnick


    I'm in the thicket:
held fast. But soon I'll ease out of the thorns,
freeing my hair, my sleeves.
Soon with the ocean on my left
I'll walk into the town.

                John,
under its hood the computer waits
and the e mails are stacking up
and the net widening with every breath.

But there's nothing new, you'd say,
everything a flashback to something else,
        all that acid you dropped at SFU
still flaring, old sites miraculously come to life,
more ghosts than islands in Vancouver Sound,
for hand in hand the dead and the living will walk forever
        through the mind's marriage.

        But now
eight hours adrift
as another dark grows deep
...
Searching, please wait...