Borrowed Days sketches out a multifaceted portrait of Marc Plourde's home ground over half a century. Set in rural Quebec and Montreal - Park Extension's immigrant streets, College Notre Dame in the 1960s, McGill Ghetto's bohemia of the '70s - these spare, restrained yet unflinching poems span the proverbial two solitudes, focusing on family, neighbours, and strangers as seen through the eyes of a sometimes bemused but compassionate observer of the human drama.