The New Canada

Experts say that much of Vancouver,
including, for that matter, my home
lies on the silt deposits of the mighty Fraser river

and when that great earthquake of ours hits
(and don't worry, it will hit)
that silt is going to shift around
and our houses will crack and crumble
and slide into the rumbling sea
gasping women and
gasping children first.

So I've decided that I might as well ship off now,
compose my eulogy and
book my plot in a mountaintop cemetery.

A gravesite chiseled out of deep Cascadian granite
where my drowned and shaken skull can rest
even after the meteorite kills off the rest of you poor bastards

even after the next generation flaps its muddy fins
up the forking tongue of the Fraser
into the shock-browed peaks of the new Canada.


from the July 2004 issue of High Altitude Poetry

more of my poems from HAP here.