Bruce Meyer reading McLuhan’s Canary

Bruce Meyer is author of editor of 63 books of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, and non-fiction. His most recent collection of poems is McLuhan’s Canary (Guernica Editions, 2019). He lives in Barrie, Ontario, and teaches at Georgian College and at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. He was the City of Barrie’s inaugural Poet Laureate from 2010 to 2014.

McLuhan’s Canary

Taj texts me as I lie down to sleep.
He says the sunrise over Mumbai
is goldly ancient wht muzzein voices,
and his day begins as mine is ending

with moths buzzing on my window
and the voice of a small world
crying in a dream I must bring to life.
Morning light on the Arabian Sea

is the colour of azaan filling the heart,
calling the world to its singular truth
as I pray that I will wake tomorrow.
The world lives one everlasting dawn

where time is only an illusion.
We no longer dwell in day or night
but in the eternity of a creative mind,
that instant when we think and speak.

It’s a small world, my not so distant friend,
and we are brothers across beliefs.
A canary sings in a perfumed garden,
and Taj asks if I can hear it.

It sings a daybreak that will not cease,
in a world that cannot stop its turning.
I text him back that I hear the bird,
the song of a planet in search of itself.

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