[Editor's Note: This is the second of 10 current Canadian 'blockbuster poems' running each Friday in The Tyee. Find out about the idea of the series and read the previous poem here.]

Goddess of Blissful Ignorance

By Elizabeth Bachinsky

And now all the neighbourhood students are drinking
expensive-ish beer on their balconies thinking of the javelin
toss love can be (at any age, but especially) when you're
young and wearing carefully purchased footwear and
accessories. One girl thinks one day I won't remember this
balcony, like tomorrow, while another's sure she's met
her future husband, an MBA from San Francisco and dear
god what's he doing in Canada what a boon for the dating
community (he's straight I mean thank god...) while next-
door neighbours lie in bed and wonder if it isn't time
to move out to the suburbs, maybe get a chunk of property,
have a kid. Trade one noise for another.

It's not that living in a city seems superfluous when you're
in it, but only that it's superfluous when you are out of it
and conversation's lacking everywhere in the end. Consider
this cluster of stargazer lilies.Seven blossoms for two dollars
at a Chinese grocery, but their perfume's too heady for such
a small room. It's four a.m. and the clubs are turning out
the young. Shame to put the blossoms on the balcony.

From God of Missed Connections, published by Nightwood Editions (c) 2009