'The Canadian' (in Verse)

I.

Burnt, curving steel outside my

            Ridged house of GLASS. 

Freight passes as giant walkers casting

Shadows on the passengers within.

One photo, two photo, three, the lineup

in front of the front pane

littered with the corpses of insects whose

unsuccessful migrations crossed a path of

hard iron.

Small feet explore the seats, the levels, the carpet,

The tables that shift and fall on top of an unsteady floor.

Newspapers a day old serve for lists, for countless re-readings –

I’ve already read that

 until

the News arrives at a future station stop, like water after a desert walk.

Meals, first sitting, second, third, called out along the tunnel so that one of three choices may be discovered.

Ten minutes of sunlight, of stepping onto solid rock and ground before the

Movement westward continues again.

II.

“TWENTY minutes!”

Where are we?

Hornepayne

Small, tanned faces and bare, brown feet climb down from the pickup at

The Home Hardware

There’s ice cream at a variety store, but the trailer isn’t working so you

Go inside to get it.

Small, thriving insects in the humid sun of Northern bedrock

Solid under the face of soft green

“All Aboard!”

III.

Old Winnipeg, centre of a nation,

With Louis Riel, son of French, English, Aboriginal

Embodying the circle of swirling life of East and West arms extending.

St. Boniface’s Staff, one of four windows into the spirit world:

Central Station, Star Forks, and the marriage bridge, pathways all

between our worlds and others.

circles, centres, ceilings, carriages of national symmetry

joining an already overflowing river of wild ducks, too small

from a Winter frozen hard for eight sky-like months.