Ottawa in Love Poem by Susan McMaster

Ah, sex!
Roundy and humpbacked,
sweaty and slick,
finagling sweet talker
keeps swinging me back
to your apaloosa arms,
your snub-nosed burrower,
musk furry croon.

Ah sex, ah love -
We're bouncing and eagled,
flying prone high -

Ah, lovely, shared,
sigh...


Just down from the Gatineaus,
lake-warmed by summer,
riding on a little post-coital bliss,
we decide to wander the silvery streets
romantically entwined,
skip to the carillons of a capital town.


So you pull on your cargoes
and I don — well not silk —
that's too Montreal.
Leggings will doand a mildly
wild Kaliyana print.
Then arm-in-arm we set out,
just artsy enough,
in an Ottawa kind of way,
to stroll down the Canal,
lamp-pooled, willow-leafed,
with Tulip-time assurance,
cruise the Market rues
under a double-faced moon,
two lazy lovers safely soignés.


Then down to the Café
where cranberry sherbert
slips down cool
after cedared-caribou
and a glass of VQA.
Oh, the NAC has a knack
for pleasing maple-bushed lovers
pining for a paddle-full
of pink-lit solage.
A toi — Mon cheri!
So terrifically sophistiqués
as we disco across Confusion Square
to toast our Birken-toes
at the eternally gassy flame.

And Sunday slips away
into a humidex August night,
as back between bland sheets,
fingers lightly crossed
(too hot for anything more)
in our riverside huis clos,
we dream ourselves into . . .

An Ottawa Day! A 20-minute jog and weights at the RA, then back to well-pressed shirts, the brief-case,
where's my lunch?, put out the recycling, can I take the car today? Buzz and whirr, clack and chat, zap
those emails, stack that stack of memos, papers, faxes, calls, timely, urgent, zip those halls on
ball-bearing toes, files tagged and ready, ADM's briefing notes, press-scrum heady, seven already? Gawd,
gotta go, quick pick-ups to make, at the cleaners, the bank machine, stop by Pretoria for the LCBO, back
to slogging on the laptop to the tune of "West Wing", then a tray of Loblaws sushi and a slug of Pelee
white, before...

Worn to the nub,
we turn the heat-exchanger
down another notch,
drop onto the duvet, for...

Ah - sex? After an Ottawa Day?
Oh dear, sex - Ottawa-style.
Round-bellied, hump-shouldered,
sweaty-palmed slick-talker - and talker, and talker -
fumbling speech-maker
keeps memo-ing me back
to your Apa-Loose promises,
your snob-nosy bureaucracy,
your must-file cocoon...

Ah, romantical intertwinations!
Ah, even-in-Ottawa sometimes -

Though we're bounded by the Eagle,
taxed Air Miles high -

Surely there's lovely love,
Somewhere in Ottawa, love,
Ah, where to find bilingual intercourse?
(I would but something's wrong with the air-conditioner, it's too damned hot,
where's my laptop, the meeting's at ten and I still have to revise those
briefing notes, I know it's 3 in the morning)
Oh, we're lost in Ottawa, love!
Grumpy, shared
sigh...