Ducks write lines in water beaver testify all along shores Lakes like fingertips pressed into the living world for memory beyond our grasp And we wonder what they talked about, our ancestors, if We share tales of them all through trails pockmarked by horses, deer, dogs humans at leisure on foot and bike On our…
Category: walking
30/30/2022 Day 6: Birds
We fly at each other, across the human -sized streets of this ancient gathering ground, these mellow golden stone streets We are not old, but youth has flown and taken roost in leggy fledglings blushing beside us. Look at us. These bushy years, these old dilemmas rubber boot years worn low to the point between…
When They Ask, I’ll Say
It’s not our fault you feel bad. You should. We should. It’s dead children. We can all do better now.
Day 2: not taken
speak to me in must of grain-bins that willow hand left trailing, strums the fence. i never thought you’d go. same old well-trodden heartlines i chased you down a dusty driveway to tell you goodbye. you stood blinking hands full of watercans. i was leaving for the world, and you just trod on homeward. is…
The Grove in the Night
It was night in Kyoto. In a grove on a mountain, in July 1995, as I was preparing to leave Japan, I received one of the great gifts of my life. It began with the Kyoto Connection, an international arts gathering. Over several months, I’d taken the stage at the Connection in various guises: as…
Camino Edmonton Day 5:Implicated
It is not complicated: one foot and then another, swing along find your pace, and good companions under bright sun, the stories unravel each turn in the path reminding one then another of us of some song some place, and the way the world lies river, cradled ever more gently sweeps toward her namesake land…
Camino Edmonton Day 4: depths
In their black in dark hours, grandmothers crawl up the Way of the Cross, proclaiming by this deed, the immutable glory to come above Ajijic, knees raw, backs craggy, grandmothers and mountains bathe in Easter sunrise. Where the body shivers and aches, the spirit must step in. Where language and history differ, there too, spirit….
Camino Edmonton Day 3: the long curve (Solstice)
we trace the long curve rise and fall, shuffle uphill praising kinesiology painkillers, gumption who owns these ways? those teenage magpies underwear unpreened who try out strut and the sharpening of beaks perhaps broad poplars blanketing june in white cotton of tomorrow’s promise or the new comer family renting first bikes, unsure about english signage…
Camino Edmonton Day 2: Crossing
whitemud winds down brown and peaty, and on the boardwalk through willow breaks squirrel on a handrail, happy to eat offerings but quick to leap away – there is a line. below fort edmonton, in the forest, we discuss old names, dark histories how to teach and learn past potholes slippery with falling how to…
June 19, Camino Edmonton Day 1: Soft
Today was the first day of the Camino Edmonton, a light-hearted 5-day walk through our river valley via the network of pedestrian and multi-use trails available. I’m writing more indepth about it for a forthcoming magazine article, but thought I’d endeavour to capture each day in a poem. Day 1: Soft sand underfoot cleft between…
Prairiepomes 