blue skies poetry

I notice the sky first

where does land end    sky begin?

I’ve come from Singapore    jungle city    rain trees and shortened views   
look up and all you see are branches    look down and find hibiscus
bougainvillea    lush greenery     rust red soil

but I’ve come home    home to Alberta
teen years in Cold Lake    with that bigbig sky
     undulating and popping with sounds of  northern lights in winter
university years in Edmonton    riverbanks    ring roads    riding the bus
birthing years in Calgary    Rockies waiting just over there

yet it’s the sky I notice first    bluewide    cloudless    in my line of sight     
     through all 360 degrees

when I look down I’m surprised at how green it all is    remember sere 
     brown  
this Calgary is beautiful    early April
no time yet for dryness which might come later  
which does come later

I learn to xeriscape    mulch garden beds with rocks or bark    
keep in precious moisture
I plant native trees    softgreen larch which don’t seem to mind clay soil   
     the lack of nutrients
and grasses    prairie grasses and wildflowers    stunning in their beauty

I walk in Fish Creek Park    see deer    coyotes    signs of beavers
our wild rose     pretty little plant     ubiquitous along river pathways    
tells me there’s beauty amidst clay and rock

a visit to Waterton  Lakes National Park reveals more    
spectacular rare flowers    flashy foreground to mountain silhouettes

I realize this land is no poor cousin     this land is Home

~ Joanne Underwood

Joanne Underwood currently lives in Alberta and enjoys going on day trips around the province. She’s a member of the wordweavers writing collective, practising her poetry and entering CBC contests. Her latest successes have been with Shakespearean sonnets—one only for bragging rights and the other for a dual-flush toilet! Hoping her writing career is not really in the toilet, she continues to write for various contests, enjoying the stimulus of the subject at hand.

Filed under: Joanne Underwood, Writing the Land by akublik Date 14 September, 2007