Wicihitowin

The thing that amazes people about the pair of geese that have made a home in the fountain in front of City Hall is not that they are there, but that they should not be. The geese seem unperturbed by the distinction. They waddle/strut with goosely dignity and unconcern across 102A Ave between the fountain and Churchill Square, pose occasionally for phone cameras. Let people share the space with them.

Usually, Canada Geese, especially in large migrant flocks, are symbols of the wild and of the north. Their coming and going marks the seasonal shifts—just as Wade Hemsworth, who wrote an iconic song about geese on the north shore of the Lake Superior, letting the worker know the end of the season of whatever he had been doing in the north was coming to an end, and that he would soon be going home to spend his money and earn the necessity to come back to the north woods.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4Z13wmZlsU)

Canada Geese typically are not symbols of city centre, not habitués of concrete and high-rise. So when they set up housekeeping in front of City Hall, the civic living room, they challenge our own sense of the qualities of the places we have created for ourselves. They adapt, and let us know we have to, as well. They accept.

What is a goose in front of city hall a metaphor for? Validation of our choice of place? Parody of our self-important claim to ownership and belonging?

What if the geese had never stopped to smell the flowerless park and swim in the treated water? Would our civic square be any the lesser for it? No. Or at least we would not have that standard of measure against which to judge ourselves and our spaces. But now that they are here, what would it say if the left? That we have created a park unsuitable for geese? That we have revealed ourselves to be unfit neighbours, unamiable hosts? Not worth sharing the space with?

But they do stay--in summers, anyway. And in so doing, maybe the geese are showing us that we need to designate that Square? They might be part of a movement to rename it not for a dead English Prime Minister who never passed through here that  have heard, but for something much closer to home. For our home itself, in a way.  

The name being promoted, my friend Anna Marie Sewell (a former Poet Laureate for the city) tells me, "would be Wicihitowin Square - after the Cree concept for 'working and sharing together.' Wicihitowin Circle of Shared Responsibility is a long-standing advisory body of reps from Aboriginal community liaising with the City." 

Honk on that, City Council...

Rainbows

As sometimes happens when we are walking our dog on the University of Alberta South Campus, a photo op comes along. And as I sometimes do, I snapped it with my phone camera, then sent the picture to my much-published poet friend, Anna Marie Sewell. And as Anna sometimes does, she returned a poem based on the photo. She focused on the geese.

And as I sometimes do, I pulled a few of my favorite lines from that poem (italicized to give credit where it is due), and worked them into one of my own. I focused on the rainbow:

Eyes follow the refraction:

a call to attention,

a suggestion that all

songs slide down from above….or

another on-ramp to the sky? 

a reminder that song also rises, 

reaches from the singer’s depths

to enrich the chorus all around, to feed soul-

hungry voyagers from their own resources, turn

their emptiness, their appetite,

into sustenance, the chance to feed

on their own need, to answer the question:

“Shall we be fertile?”

 What, then will

we bring to the table, chanters in the

choir that never ceases?

Then another friend, Shayne, came back with a poem on the Portuguese concept of "saudade, for which there is no complete translation in English, a poem that connected through both geese and rainbow as essential to the landscape, so  went back to work with lines from both Anna Marie and Shayne to push things along:

a constant

vague desire for something

lingering at the bright

union of rainbow reaching

down to the grass and the geese,

backs turned to the spilling

violent color behind;

or hiding just beyond

the ragged edges refracting

into the clouds that half-

helped create this call to attention:

the sense that we have not

exactly seen this all before

in all its rolling untamed

familiarity

Singing with Joy

Several years ago I heard Renny Khan from U. of A. International, originally from Trinidad, tell the story of a group of Caribbean islanders in the early 16th century. These people had heard of the Spanish and their ships--news had gone around the ring of islands fairly quickly of these sailing ships that arrived and enslaved or eradicated the populations. So when the sails appeared on the horizon, the entire population, which might have been Carib, or might have been Arawak, or maybe of some other culture (and probably did not call themselves either Carib or Arawak in any case), walked off the island and drowned themselves. The obvious story was framed in the knowledge of what they walked away from, drowned themselves to avoid. To me, the more pressing story was what they walked towards--what in their worldview was waiting for them in that possibly saving embrace of the sea. With the entire population gone, no one was left to tell that story, and it was that loss--the loss of a functional world view--that began to pick away at me. At that time, I had not turned my hand or mind to poetry in a shamefully long time, but the occasion put me back in that mode--in a messy and erratic way.

This past April, when Joy Harjo was the opening guest artist at the Edmonton Poetry Festival, my friend and mentor, Anna Marie Sewell (whose name comes up in earlier postings), the former Poet Laureate of the city, organized a Poets' Jam to kick off the Festival. She invited a number of us to consider performing something on stage, in a loose group, after Joy and Anna had done their opening performances. I had never done anything like this, and had not even tuned my old guitar in another shamefully long time, let alone sing along with some others or supply accompaniment. But we can die only once--so I submitted that poem of the islanders who chose the water, and Anna accepted it. That acceptance began an educational couple of weeks of rewriting to get it into a shape and rhythm that could work out loud and to accompaniment.

In the end, it appeared to work pretty well--thanks to some strong percussion support from the others on stage (Gary Garrison, Ivan Sundal, Joshua Jackson, Daniel Poitras as well as Anna Marie and Joy) and from the audience, to keep me on pace. At least, nobody got up and left or called for their money back...

(Photo credit Randall Edwards, who took pictures of all the Festival events, photos that can be seen on the Edmonton Poetry Festival Facebook site)

Taking Leave                                     Don Perkins

A community

known

unknown

misknown

to history-- maybe

Arawak--

or maybe

Carib--

or maybe—not,

saw Spanish sails, knew the score,

walked off

the island:

The future’s

vacation

playground.

Beach paradise.   Setting

for countless     beer ads;

symbol   of quiet   retreat.

Packed up   the children   and walked

offshore    and down . . .  into what?

Oblivion? Freedom?

Life? Choice?

What did they call it?

Call themselves?

Optioned out to slavery, debauchery, disease, belittlement, dispossession and all the

     benefits and joys

     of civilization

they took . . . leave.

Of what?

Their senses?

The senseless?

To what? Make sense?

Stay sensible?

Get   away   from it all?

They took ---- leave.

To say “NO”?

To say “Not us”?

These are not their words

but ours: Not their answers

but ours. They took--leave,

moved down – and under—

maybe not away

but to.

Just maybe

meant  not  “No,”

meant,  just maybe, “Yes.”

We latterly enlightened latecomers

presume empathy  

for fellow humans

gone,    not lost--

Can there be lost

when found is not an option?

Not absent.

Not away for the day

from the office or school,

or missing some great party.

If we hear it at all,

their silence

gifts us this:

Dead certainty of our eternal ignorance.

Treetops and gargoyles

I spent this morning responding to and marking papers from an introductory non-fiction writing class I often teach at this time of year. One line really caught my attention in a piece recalling being a child and climbing a favourite tree. The last line was "When you're at the top of the tree, you don't think about the ground."

This afternoon I took the memory of that line off to Cally's Teas, a place I have not had much recent time to sit in and just relax and let the words happen. I started in with that memory, and this is what came out:

From the top of the tree

   is no thought of the ground

No fear of falling in the cuddle

   of gently swaying limbs of last resort

The climb not from, but to

  once done is gone, past concern

What matters is the up here and

   the out there, rarefied

Solitude, alone with the heights

  keeping private company with

    the  

           sky

Which evolved by July 23 into:

Gently swaying limbs of last
resort fold around, cuddle,
erase thoughts of solid ground.

No longer in transition,
no fear of falling from the top
of a climb accomplished, alone,

waiting for the tree to grow, gradually
sprout the next inviting step?
Or whispering, "Feathers. Feathers. Feathers"?

 So imagine my surprise tuning in to Shawna Lemay's blog site, CALM THINGS, and finding her quoting this:

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

- William Wordsworth, from The Prelude

I was waiting at Cally's for someone to ask for a poem on a topic of personal interest--and I got a reassuring request from a regular, asking me to write about the surprise one feels after being in a loving relationship for fifty years, having it end in the death of her partner, then finding that she can get that feeling again, with another, even so late in life. I wrote it for her, and for her only.

Then I picked up a line from Sheila Watson's Paris Diary, about a day walking the streets and not conversing with the gargoyles. Again, an image to conjure with. This came out of the hat:

I did not have time

to chat with the gargoyles

on sunny days dark, mad-eyed

crouching witnesses to the passing

scene of busy feet going…

    ... God knows where,

on rainy days grim, spitting

trouble-makers focusing

random drops from above

into malicious streams of cold

discomfort down unsuccessfully

turned collars below.

    What took my time

from chat? Who can recall?

The gargoyles never cared to ask

and my mind wandered.