ten years from now

I will have a vague recollection of
sitting on some rock
in the middle of the Rideau river
where my drunken kinsmen came at night
to disturb contingents of ducks
with cell phones and beer
(or so I was told by a French man
I kept meeting)

and I will remember
the tiny waterfall sloping the torrent
across the birds who waited
until they were fed

and then the ant that I saved from drowning
after brushing it from my leg

as I try to recall the year
whatever I was doing in Ottawa
and why i was trying to write poems
and I will sit up like Purdy on his dirty promontory
slouch back like crinkled paper and whisper
to hell with poetry then
to hell with poems