blue skies poetry

1.

Towards each face the sleeping rivers return.

For three nights and two days the ebb and flow playground

along Elbow and Bow succeeded our guesses. Oh-oh,

someone forgot to open the floodgates

in Sunnyside. Mudwaters churn around teddy bear and baby grand

feet alike. Followed by

another river, of sump pumpers, squeegeers, vans with sumo sized

appetites. They disgorge sandwiches, mineral water, volunteers.

Such indiscriminate flux, I forgot about my private

space for a while. I was in Calgary, the Saddledome

suddenly hosting a non-event. More rain in the

forecast, a dream-scaffold for the

rivers that stay and replenish attitude,

working bees to an eager child.
2.

Without power for four days no running water the two friends sleep with their dentures in.

Towels soak around the fridge, its top half starting to smell what the mind is wanting to part

with almost erupts in the pitch dark when eighty years’ worth amounts to a sharp scolding.

Melted ice mixed with rocks to hold down the drifting wit, sirens downtown wake her up

savouring ginger tea candies while the black geranium, the insomniac hoya, gets a douse

of toilet water and the tongue sleepwalks as it detaches from its roof, the prospects now

of surveillance, rescued from the flood, of stepping into the civic arms of Nenshi, are good.
3.

Some pipe laxative, five cars heavy on Bonnybrook bridge, was saved.

Calgary zookeepers, swimming with hippos, close a gate so the weir

won’t kiss their brown ovens goodbye.

Imagine a tickling safari

tigers floating through the Weaselhead, the

pulse of every uprooted now you see it now you don’t

water-soaked

In my dialect: sui deem

then to simply stand still ankle deep in it

an otherwise unremarked pleasure.
4.

an artist’s kiln underwater

archived fiche     the first

pipe organ      earlier

puddle of spun metals

gleam in Katie Ohe’s eye

that kind of earnest

not in the beginning

was the separation

but as a matter of starting somewhere

do we find ourselves at the growling

come hell or high water

window thinking of grass

sighing     then the

blue fills it complete      they’re gone