Catalogue d’oiseaux (Book*Hug Press, Spring 2021) began as notes sent to poet Aaron Tucker’s long-distance partner. Not initially intended for publication, the writings moved, over time, into a long, lyrical, confessional love poem. Following the couple on travels across the globe—from Berlin to the Yukon, Porto to Toronto—this poem is expansive, moving sensually through small, intimate spaces and the larger world alike. Traced through art, architecture and the cultural life of varied cities, Catalogue d’oiseaux lives between geographies and chronologies as a kaleidoscopic gathering of the many fractals that make up a couple’s life. This is a stunning work; a celebration of the depth of adult love, and the elemental parts of life that make it so.

A Sunday afternoon, that morning, our Toronto bed

the cedar smoke from the neighbour Anishinaabe centre

mingles with late autumn rain pecking at the window

with the drums & chants from the ceremony next door

& the clouds bend to our sleep, make themselves soothing

our asleep waterhands over each other, like cirrus or silty dreams

our waking causes the rain to pause momentarily

& it resumes only when we kiss softly good morning, hold

you, soft sea mist, cajole us from our bed eventually

the promise of our favourite simple diner, Chew Chews

the runny yolks over potatoes, toast with strawberry jam

the server overexcited that Cher & Queen Latifah

film there next week, his hands clasped as he repeats

& we finish our breakfast, walk through Cabbagetown

under umbrellas, soft patter, watery dance steps

buy lattes from Jet Fuel, milky & vapoursteam, continue east

this neighbourhood named for the poverty of its Irish settlers

tailoring & lining their front yards with the large green brassica

Catalogue d’Oiseaux, Toronto < — > Mainz-Kastel is a chapbook released in April 2018 by above/ground books that is an excerpt from an ongoing larger poem that stitches together travel and art and love. Buy a copy now! You can read an excerpt from a different part of the poem at Chaudiere Book’s National Poetry Month blog and an excerpt from the chapbook below: