A dim image of me

People still hold things in their mouths. Mail,
a pen. It's a primitive act. They tuck laundry
under a chin, they use an elbow to loop
rope. Their thighs pull a cork or they uncouple
a fishing pole behind bent knees.
I was floating in the Delta hotel swimming pool.
Floating on my back. And I saw myself in a
panel of dark slanted glass above me. A dim
image of me, floating, and it was in a place
not directly above me. I was about sixty feet
away. And it looked just as it does in those
dreams, those afterlife memories where youre
dead and you float above your own body. It felt
like I was dead now, drifting, a faded body
way beneath me.
I walked through Stanley Park. I stood by one
of those big redwoods. When I got close to it,
the sound in the world was turned down a few
notches. That room noise that they inject into
a film's sound mix. The air felt absent of it.
I put on my coat because, in the shade, I was
cold. There is not a tree in all of Newfoundland
with this girth.
They say that my book is done. It's an object now,
and that it looks beautiful. It has end papers
and someone in production called the dustjacket
the "case". Thank you Bill Douglas and thank you
Anansi for making a good-looking book. I can't
wait to see it.