A Poem in Response to the Federal Budget of 2024

The highlights are not entirely unexpected
    housing  health  defence
A well-chosen trio of new parks
  which I want to explore and soon
Some smart strategic nuances make me cheer
  here early this morning alone at my desk
(Amateur policy wonk
Sociology nerd
Subscriber to the weekly Angus Reid polls
Part-time poet always and forever)
Like faster approval of medical professionals from far beyond
   these fortunate borders and pharmacare at last
Long overdue disability pension supplements and more for mental health
Which makes me remember certain faces, voices, cups of tea
Some highlights make me despair
   school lunches for another 400,000 kids
   confronting hate with money for training to educate and protect us
   from Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and all the other-isms which divide us
   turning some of us into simple-minded braying bigots, fearful, blaming, abusive
Oh let me not go down that path
Let me remember two hungry children, one five year old hiding under a bed
His eight year old brother on a tall cupboard in a dingy one room hotel suite
Hiding so a drunken father would not beat them
Let me remember their rescue instead, the breakfast I bought them first
 

PS: Life is not Fair, granted. I must resort to prose because I am angry despite my best efforts to be pure and distilled and even-tempered. Phooey to that well-mannered avoidance tactic! Paying our fair share of windfall income sets off a lot of squealing and squawking. So be it. Go hungry for two days and sleep under a bed or on top of a cupboard. Imagine choosing between rent, food, heating or asthma inhaler ($100 without a plan). Think hard before voting for a wee neo-fascist nitwit with limited life experience beyond his safe and privileged seat in a wealthy riding.

Bear Bells: a poem

The dogs commence their canine chorus
In a mishmash of keys, minor & major
Spreading eastward from the lake
& the creek which divides this village

A baying hound anchors the bass line
The Rottweiler an irate baritone
Down neighbouring blocks, dogs of assorted heritage
Yip & howl & growl

Much umbrage is taken by all
Meanwhile the black bears shamble along
In trios, duos & solos
Sniffing beach rocks for the faint trace of picnics

Or juicy berries, all gone by fall
& plums & apples & walnuts & grapes
All fallen or picked, dried, frozen, canned
The bears follow their noses

Ignore the howling dogs
Whose people, raking leaves
Baking bread, sawing firewood
Hear only the Sunday bells & shrug or smile

As the caterwauling opera subsides
& the bears head into the trees
& only the shushing creek sounds
& the bells echo in these mountains

Apples: a poem

       
20 pounds for ten bucks
Granny Smiths from Keremeos
Perfect crisp green apples
Far too many for us

The rest stayed in their plastic bag
Inside our sturdy old cooler
Out on the deck, Nature’s fridge
Twelve steps up from the earth


Two batches of baked applesauce
Peeled, chunked, drizzled with honey
Dabbed with butter
Into the freezer for later

Handy stairs for the Bear
Who shoved the cooler down them
While we slept, weary to our bones
The plastic bag neatly left for me
Under the maple tree

We Walk Among The Bones

For Barb Yeomans & Dick Callison

My old friends guide us
past the stone wall, their row of roses
all hardy rugosas, the massive oaks and maples
planted one spring five decades ago
wind-shorn of their red and gold leaves

We walk down the long gravel driveway
to the land they first laid eyes on
the once-dense forest of white pine
cedar, fir, hemlock, larch and birch
to the meadow high above the old mine

A mule deer spies on us near the cedars
until we spot her too and she slips away
across the coulee dividing the forest
bought to foil a lurking land shark
visions of view homes dancing in his head

We make our way to their Someday Place
to their youth and their summer dreams
to their morning coffees on the wooden deck
built to hold their teepee high and dry
ringed by golden larch, most lovely of trees

We’ve seen and heard two winter wrens
one solitary squirrel, a crow flying high
on this raw November day
but we are all chilled now, the light gone flat and grey
only the birch trees glow, broken bones on the forest floor

A femur here, a tibia there
branches like ribs and collarbones, cracked
the virus is creeping down the tree-tops
rotting the tree from the inside out
encased by the famously beautiful bark

We walk to their big house slowly, carefully
we help each other over fallen logs
still talking
still laughing
still dreaming  

Crow Vendetta Renga

                         Crow Vendetta Renga*

Now they dive-bomb me
when I work in my garden
Hitchcock comes to mind…

Beady-eyed adversaries
take aim: foul ammunition

Aha! they cackle
What a putz, a pushover.
Let’s crap on her plants!

Unfazed by stones that fall short
These crows jeer, “We’ll be back!”












*first published in Crowlogue: Prose and Poems by the Clayoquot Writers’ Group (Postelsia Press: Tofino, BC) 2010

Once Upon a Glacier: a prose poem

 Once Upon a Glacier

Today, every steep flank and wind-razored edge of these mountains gleams in the pale winter sun. A bluebird day. Pure white, pure blue. Below, most humans live on three alluvial creek deltas, fanned out into Slocan Lake, a long lean trench deep and cold and clean. Fed by waterfalls amid creeks like blue wrinkles on the topo map of an ancient watchful face, this lake shimmers like the silver which lured thousands to dig here, get rich here, or just die trying here. 

Our glacier, downgraded a decade ago to an ice field, looks more like its former self today,
fresh new tons of snow clothe its raw exposed shoulders and mineral-rich throat. The filthy smoke and ash of wildfires are whisked away by the wind and layered and frosted by a giant’s hand. Our son hiked up there once with a posse of boys and two patient guides. They could see their own tiny villages from where their tents were pitched, below the green ice cliffs and grubby seamed snow of the glacier. 

It was, his ten year old self told us, just like being an astronaut.

While We’re Away

The postmaster paused
for less than five seconds
before she blinked her big grey-blue eyes
behind her glasses and said,
‘No, no, don’t worry about forms,
I’ll tell the staff they can collect your mail.
They adopted our cat.’

Leo, or Leonardo de Catprio, by his long name,
so handsome, so calm, so silvery grey
a legendary mouser, that big bruiser
and a soft warm form so cozy on the bed
where, sadly, her young son’s allergies flared

I told her how my husband
had spotted Leo
early one morning down the alley
on the prowl
in and out of two ancient sheds
And how I’d once heard him being called
at midnight, a loving plaintive call
Leee-oooo…Leee-oooo…

We extol his virtues
And the kindness of such good neighbours
Who keep a watchful eye on our place while we’re away
And who will pick up our mail
No questions asked
No federal forms or signatures required
In this village where our postmaster
knows all our names, and likely our virtues and vices
And those of our cats and dogs too.