Gone Lawn 62 : rob mclennan

Today, the way the red squirrel moves. Articulates the yard. I remember the winter it attempted through the ceiling of our sunroom, burrowed beneath the eaves. Christine shook her fist. The weeks they made eye contact, took measure of the other. Held, to their stands. A showdown was inevitable.

After the tenant moved out, this was all that was left. Tenant, no. His sister. After his sister moved out. Once upon a time there was a pennywhistle, a postcard and a piece of string. Whether abandoned or forgotten, they existed just below the threshold of anyone’s attention, so we don’t know if they spoke. After a few months, the owner unaware they were there, someone new moved into the space and set them aside. I think she tossed them.

In her favourite story, a stone becomes a human ear. We don’t know what the earth hears, of what we might speak. Will it answer. Is this a story, or a memory? As the girl holds the stone, warm in her palm, she wonders. Perhaps it was always an ear, set at the end of the driveway, by the hedge at the property-line. She holds the ear in her hand and is silent, not sure what to do but listen. She waits.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences(University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. Website: https://robmclennan.substack.com/.