Wine from the Okanagan and Picaroon beer.
A kernel of Taber corn in my teeth
from a cob roasted over a fire.
Face to the wind, skating and cold,
the length of the Rideau Canal;
riding home west, biking down Baseline;
Carleton in summer and trying to learn French
with raven haired Marie-Claude.
A Fredericton park, Odell with the dog,
as we wander within A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and mosquitoes enjoy the buffet.
The beeping of snowplows;
the droning of lawnmowers.
Manitoba drowning each spring.
The quietus of leaves every fall.
Lobster in Shediac, Vancouver and salmon,
cedar-planked, maple glazed, and oysters
from all of the coast of BC;
oysters that come from Caraquet Bay
and fresh water perch in a pan full of butter
in a summer somewhere in Ontario.
Passing Frank’s Slide as we made our way east,
eyes opened wide at the reach of the sky,
the slate of the landscape,
the opulence of empty space.
The police, North-West Mounted,
horsed and unhurried,
as I wait for a bus in the stillness of Sunday,
a Fort Macleod street, silent in summer.
A cottage and beach at the rim of Lake Huron
and a tent we were in outside Tobermory,
Georgian Bay misty that morning.
Trains to Toronto, buses through Red Deer,
an Edmonton week at the YMCA
and a bed that was more an idea than bed.
A small plane to Halifax, buffeted, bouncing,
a paddle ball toy as I’m shitting my pants,
and so many concerts my hearing is crap.
And all of us wearing the mask of a hyphen
as if we were just demographics
for some marketing asshole’s branding
of scars on our butts, etchings that read:
“I am this kind of Canadian,”
as if Canadian wasn’t enough;
as if nobody’s mind ever changed.
As if no one was ever rewritten by time.
As if attaching a word made an eagle a toad,
or made dogs into deer; or ptarmigan,
domestic cats;
as if a woman was only her DNA and a man a collection of genes.
As if a people were only the bullshit of history
or a kneejerk waving of flags.
As if the bone and the blood gave a shit;
as if the bone and the blood ever noticed;
as if I would care, or had even the time
when everything changes,
becoming, transforming,
and imagination’s unboxed
and so very young it has yet to learn limits
or discover the biases we think we don’t have,
common and individual.
Languages, voices, the speech of a country
and a spectrum of people, so many people,
in a place that is so many places
and always only one place:
Singular. Plural. Unique and banal,
and always mine: My Canada.
April 19, 2016
(Revised: September 19, 2017)
(Revised: July 1, 2019)
