canada poems

Post-Rotary Lullaby | Steven Fortune - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Post-Rotary Lullaby | Steven Fortune

Silly but innocuous
maybe even obvious of me
to tell her blue
was my choice
colour of cat
(Those overcast days
of moist sidewalks
and teal sky saliva
vivify the whimsy in me)
It made her laugh
and I was happy to be known
then vindicated
when a ray of margarine yellow
on apparent cue
punctured the meringue above
cupped an eyeball of mine
like a fish hook
and prodded my entire head
to register a house
sporting navy-royal rooftop
shingles on a road
we often travelled
in conclusion to
the Rotary traverse
It had to be a fresh roof
or at least
freshly relevant
to the compendium
of our eclectic verbal scores
played out on this route
Whatever the criteria
it nursed to health
my hitherto-comedic melancholy
over non-existent naturally
blue cats
Only a triumphant solidity
of blue above could pad
this slice of juvenilia
with further yeast
but I end it as I ended
the walk
happy that I made her laugh
and whole in the encompassing
of teal and yellow
in the elemental suburbs
of my grounding hub

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Main-à-Dieu | Steven Fortune - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Main-à-Dieu | Steven Fortune

I.
The Maritime epitome
leaks sensational exchanges
between moon magnets at play

Telephones open your eyes
Remember sweet nothings
stumbling shy and evasive on shore
and spraying its stones with cobalt kisses
‘ere tucking it in with the tides

II.
Without having consciously channeled
the Scottish mind for gesticulations
or affable sense of fashion
the hairs on my frame oscillate
in the unitary itch of a synthesis

Clouds shuffle in and shower me
with quaint accents
of Lambert and Connery
Dad’s origami of tape
in the Highlander VHS shell
A kind of magic

III.
Lock on and scoop up
the small islands swimming
like virtual pets in the jittery wilderness
of the ocean

Up the road the wharves exhale
eager to recast their splintered designs
on the ship-mother gut of Mira River

A blessing awaits its suitors
cruising in fresh paint
smoking Cape Islander uniforms

Water on water
recovers the fleet
to out-see the ragged red
floor denizens again

IV.
Old is alive
Small is endurable
Fishermen of a place old and small
are sponge toys under this sky’s
humdrum faucet drip

V.
Sample the pond in the womb of the meadow
Filter the fertile Atlantic stream for its insular
rock jewel

Let the screens show and suggest
that highlander fishermen still live here
Highlander could have been lived here

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Washa-Quon-Asin* | Dee Allen - A Poetry Website Featuring Poems by Contemporary Poets

Washa-Quon-Asin* | Dee Allen

Many who had hiked through Canadian wilderness
[ A century ago ] Took notice of a bird in flight

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flies by night

At once: a hunter, a guide, a trapper
A living made from the furs in his sight

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flies by night

Into his forest lair, he gave shelter to a pair
Of beavers & a female pony
Beautiful, willful, contrite

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flies by night

He recorded every caper onto pages of paper
Turned articles & books
Thousands read his every insight

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flies by night

He took bold strides to speak for trees & wild lives
Nature’s preservation against devastation became his plight

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flies by night

Then he travelled to an evening pow-wow,
Where he’d shown native chiefs how
He embraced their ways,
Mastered their sacred dances by firelight

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flies by night

In Canada & England, news had spread:
One day at home, he was suddenly dead

His secret’s out: The “Red Indian”
Was English & White

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flew by night

But never mind the buckskins, the feathered headdress, the moccasins
Or false tales about his past, every sleight

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flew by night

His other steps were true, after all,
Preventing ecology’s steady fall
What mattered was the nature of his fight

A rare one the Ojibwa called
Washa-quon-asin–He who flew by night.

______________________________
W: Canadian Aboriginal Day 2014
[ For Archibald Belaney a.k.a. Grey Owl–1888 – 1938. ]

*OJIBWE: “Grey Owl”.

[ From the new book Elohi Unitsi: Poems [ 2013 – 2018 ],
Conviction 2 Change Publishing, 2020. ]
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