Beavers’ teeth never stop growing so they chew on wood to keep them at a manageable length. If they didn’t maintain them their teeth would eventually grow into their brains.
I shot a beaver in my youth
who cursed me with this curse
My teeth
will be your poems now
remembering our gift unused
grows fatal to the brain
WINDMILL FARMS
How many will it take to keep this thing in the air
ATHABASCA
Along the Icefields Parkway
(prettiest road in the world)
winding from Lake Louise to Jasper
lies a glacier that feeds three oceans
(Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic)
It takes a hundred years for a snowflake
falling on the top to make it to the bottom
Before a snowflake that falls today
finishes its journey the glacier may be gone
On the other side of the road in spring
water falls down a long face of rock
They call it the weeping wall
it may still be there
REINCARNATION BY LOON
Now there’s a sound
you could take anywhere
and remember when you returned
REINCARNATION BY CLOUD
Does the rain falling on us now
remember the palmed oasis
the emerald lake of the Rockies
the laughing over small stones
Hand in hand we stand
faces upward, wet with hope
PRAYERS
The frogs out back
are singing in the rain
Not like Gene Kelly
in the actual raining now
More like the brave
in Remington’s painting
standing alone on a hill
skull raised above his head
trying to conjure back the buffalo
Last week it worked for the frogs
SQUALL LINE
Coming across the fields – fast
dust running from the rain
It will be caught
its name will be mud
WHAT WE DID AT COUNTRY SCHOOL
The garter snake
is colorful and kind
it means no harm to man
In venomous snakes the young
are more dangerous than the old
The garter snakes have found
it is the same with man
BEARS
(for Mildred on the train)
Up the stubbled cheeks
of the Canadian Rockies
A morning kiss before
they wake to show their teeth
A breath of cold mist
surprising as the surgeon’s slap
Out the window, hills
great Grizzlies deep in sleep
Fir tree fur
warming humps and rumps
EDMONTON – LATE SEPTEMBER
The leaves are dancing down the street
Leaves like the thousand children
that I never had with you
A skip, a dash, a lovely pirouette
then past, and gone