On Leaving Calgary, June 2007
I’m leaving a bit wound up
kinda groggy from Cowboys
cheering and hooting. Here, there
is always something big brewing
close on the heels of something
even bigger. Seems everyone
is on the home stretch, hand over
fist to riches or fame, a living
national treasure, just like the movies.
Strenuous hours afford the still
impressive illusion of the good
life: Angus beef on the barbeque,
horses loafing around in the west field,
children whinnying up a future
on the flats of Fort McMurray.
Still, I will miss thick swirls of white
waving in the dark, how snow
drifting muffles religious mumbo
jumbo and softens the perverted
menagerie of daily news. I will
miss the long and graceful
body of the sky, prairie storms
rattling the edges of my bed
sticking the chin with a much
harder slap than the darling spit
of coastal rain, hardly rustling
silence, never ending. After
I’ve chiseled off bubblegum
glommed to the screen door
patched a few walls full
of holes, and spruced up
the bathroom with paper
flowers my children decorated,
the nut house will be empty
for the new tenants to fill with
the same stuff we are moving out.
I will number all my tears
for Calgary and should a westjet
pilot be bouncing me along a YYC
runway again, I might mock
distress that the ocean has been
paved over, but there will be many
to visit, many more who care,
and not just about hockey.
~ Sean Wiebe
Sean Wiebe is the principal at Heritage Christian Academy in Calgary and is completing a doctoral degree in the Centre for Cross-Faculty Inquiry at the University of British Columbia. His most recent poetry can be found in Misunderstandings Magazine, The Windsor Review, and Arabesque Press. He has edited two collections of poetry, The Last Red Smartie (1996) and A Nocturnal Reverie (1994).
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