A new year begins for me...

.

...but I will miss these days of May...

I just want to take a moment to say thank you all for sharing your poems & a bit of your lives with me. A great big thank you to those of you who took the time to comment on my poems, hugely appreciated!

And since, as it turns out, so many of my words were written about Eric (truly the man of my dreams), I want to introduce him to you. The little boy with pockets full of butterflies is my nephew. He is also a social butterfly (an extrovert in my family?) who loves hangin' out with me in Little Italy, my hood and my home.

À la prochaine!

a poem by Marcus McCann;

call this, then, my last post for MayDay 2008 (by the time you read this, I will already be back in Ottawa). A poem by Ottawa poet Marcus McCann, author of a couple of chapbooks, including So Long, Derrida (2006; winner of the 2005 University of Ottawa 48-Hour Novella Contest), the collaborative Basement Tapes (with Nicholas Lea and Andrew Faulkner) and Heteroskeptical (above/ground press, 2007), where this poem is from. He also has poems appearing in a number of other publications, including various issues of The Peter F. Yacht Club and recent publications from Warren Fulton's Pooka Press.

Rates of change

A limit is a kind of
holding constant,

imperfectly
near.

Function depends on
variable, the root of. The square

roof of.
Not to validate calculus but

the lesson was integral:
the Power Rule.

What was committed to memory?
What was committed too:

function held
constant.

Held. Constant.
And hurt by calculus,

its rates of change, its
gaffe sex ed.

Congratulations Poets!

What an amazing month of poetry!

By my calculations (and please let me know if I got your count wrong), we had over 150 poems from this years May Day-ers, and several more from other Canadian poets offered up for our perusal.

Congratulations to all who participated! I know I had a lot of fun writing and reading - hope you all did too! Hats off to Kerry, for hitting the poem-a-day mark!

Be sure to report here if you end up revising and publishing poems we saw here, so we can see the final versions in print...