Part 1: Hat
A different light casts possibilities:
friendships blossom in a land of hats, and coats bloom, revitalised by an eco artist’s hand.
Life takes on a happy texture, when time is a backwards flowing river
and wheelchairs carry festival smiles upstream.
You knitted me a holiday;
altered my pattern and sold me some yarn.
Our stitches flew with rooks, walked with coyotes and laughed with friends.
Tangled by snowberry mountains
we slipped and cabled,
two together on a Golden adventure,
with maple motif and the prospect of bears.
Part 2: Boots
Yesterday, we defied road closed snow
to ski up mountains in regular boots,
Waving to impossibly long trains as they
snaked by, down spiral tunnels.
Today, We left downtown
to straddle snow blooms and boulders
and sink our feet and claw downhill
Where beavers creek and water falls.
We shared the road with acoustic coffee house yawns,
long lines of round nosed trucks and invisible hauliers.
Slowed by construction projects, brake checks and broken pine,
We left the highway, hungry for a cabined night in the red heart of the green forest,
tucked in like those illusive bears.
Part 3: Coat
Strutting with the wild things
The Canadian mountain me
Pretty hat, pretty coat, pretty Japanese pants,
An eco print queen bee!
Part 4: River
Vast rocky hollows emerald green,
From winter’s sleep there springs a dream
of summer, doused in scent of pine,
an artery unlocked by time.
Beneath its petticoats of snow,
this river heeds the call to flow
by elk and bear; it cracks the ice,
and journeys on through paradise.
Part 5: Lakes
Which God is to say if there is more beauty in alluvial blue water,
or in the vast Medicine word Lake exchanged between cousins?
I heard it in the soft shoe shuffle
as melting ice stacked and shifted,
and saw it in the striped tail of a disgruntled chipmunk.
Part 5: Death on Mount Robson
Travelling backwards, lost in time,
to a place where I was nine,
and drinking iced tea through a straw,
(the paper kind they had before)
Traced memories of a patriarch –
Three thousand metres to the top,
We mortals kept a lowly road
By Fraser River’s icy cold.
And past us, on the snow-packed trail
ran an officer tall and pale
On, up the hill, to where a soul
drew one last breath so icy cold.
A team worked hard for goodness’ sake
but soon he slept, no more to wake,
His still slight form was borne to base
by men in black with sorry face.
Great Robson’s might so drew us on
to Kinney Lake where we sat down
and made a raft from lichen green,
to sail our Easter eggs downstream.
aplaceforpoetry 