What first caught my eye: the colour
was off – grey, which once was green.
Next came the thud of the wrecking ball
slamming into its side. Elsewhere, hunks
of concrete hung from steel rods, bent
in a craze of angles, like misshapen
ornaments. A foreman circles in a white
pick-up, surveying the demolition,
like a predator, waiting for the bloodless
collapse. Corbusier hailed
them […]
Eleven years old with legs like a colt; I could run forever.
Arms pumping, grain scratching my knees, my calves, my bare arms and thighs
I ran through the ripening grain with my wheat-coloured hair streaming in my wake
Behind me narrow swaths cut through the grasses.
In an arc pattern, I ran, to cut off the stampeding cow;
to […]
“Come on kids, we’re going to wash the car,” says my Dad,
It’s springtime in the Alberta countryside,
and we pile into the backseat of the family car,
holding our buckets and rags,
warmed by the sun-heated seats,
huge smiles on our faces, because we know,
it’s going to be so very cold and a real challenge.
The ditch water rushes through […]
1943
a hospital room in Ottawa, Canada,
is declared extraterritorial
so the only royal child born in Canada,
Princess Margriet, could maintain her Dutch lineage
she is named after the daisy, flower of the resistance
1945
away, the Princess is carried away, far away
to her homeland, a country foreign to her
her memories of her earliest time in Canada
filled in with the stories […]
Why is it always us and them?
I don’t think I’m guilty of perpetuating a cycle,
forcing my fellow blood to join hands and just circle round and round like a
dance.
I have never drummed and drummed into your ear or theirs,
that you people just wouldn’t understand us.
So best to leave us to our own little piece of […]
