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Monday's Poem © Daniel Rajala Monday Morning Monday morning I looked at my watch while I was still in bed in the cabin and it said it was after ten o'clock which was banking hour and the time any other establishment opened up in the city. I had to leave the mountain by at least noon if I was going to get to the bank in the city in time to take out my last remaining $20.00. Which was not worth being in a big hurry and I rolled up the sleeping bag, hiding it beside a cupboard on the other side of the bed where not much light hit and I gave the place a real good sweeping. Even two times and walked to the other old cabin to fill containers from the old wooden rain barrel. There had been some squatters there for a while and it looked like they had borrowed some of my candles. I flushed the toilet in the house for the first time this year and the squatters had written some nasty graffitti on the walls: called me a dirty little bitch and a whore and there had been a book thrown on the floor called Jubel's Children. That's the way it is in the house and before leaving made it look like no-one had been here and then they would never know if it was really me even with my books of poetry on top of the fireplace. As I started climbing the steep ravine trail to the bottom of the mountain I could hear the noon horn go off in the city and as I would, sang the poem I wrote "Anabelle" like I have never before.

Daniel Rajala is a former long-time citizen of Vancouver's downtown now living in Powell River. His poems have been widely published in magazines like Minus Tides and Eclectic Mews. He has a chapbook, Every Day Working Man, and has had two books, Blood Sky and Waiting for Tamara, published by Multicultural Books. Waiting for Tamara contains poems inspired by living close to nature, and which reflect the disappearance of freedom in British Columbia. In 2003 his poem "Diamonds" was published in an anthology called Heart of the Community edited by Paul Taylor.