Missing the Canadian Sky

We have been home from Canada for a whole week. The jet-lag is gone but I feel as though I am recovering from a piece of unexpected and serious heart surgery and need to take it easy. In other words my heart is sore. In other words I’m missing the firstborn son and in other words I am missing all the cosseting and that sense of being looked after. But I suspect that there is something else also at play and that something is to do with landscape, with space and sky, even (gasps) the weather.

I can’t say that the little towns of Canada are beautiful, frankly they all bear a marked resemblance to trading estates with housing estates circling the perimeter. Nothing much is old in the way European towns are old. However, where my son lives I note the friendliness and the sense of community. I notice that the place is clean, no litter, and that there is a pride in civic spaces. But the thing about Canada which captivates is its landscape and that big sky. I know it isn’t always blue but when it is that blue goes on and on and is richer than any blue sky anywhere. I love the emptiness and the way it emphatically puts humanity in its place.

Here in Dorset it has rained all week. Thick, relentless pouring; my garden is like mud. I want to be in Canada again,  take the long walk to the wonderful Found Bookshop, to have coffee there, to go and have brunch at Sunny Side Up. I want the cold. I want the sky.

So…a couple of Canada inspired poems for you today. The first one is about visiting Calgary and taking the elevator on the Tower. I wrote this after our first visit a couple of years ago. We were very jet-lagged and very country bumpkin about traffic!

Jet-Lagged In Calgary

Walk

       don’t walk

lights    blink

red -green- red

the road as wide as

an ocean

        red -green -red

Too loud   too busy

I am

afraid  but

the green light

blinks

walk don’t

walk

don’t stop

We stumble into the lobby

the elevator reassures

its calm  professional voice tells us

door closing, lift

going up.

it seems to know my heart is beating

crazy- fast after the business of

crossing the road

We go up   right to the top of the tower

the doors open

the whole of Calgary   the

Rocky Mountains    and a vast blueness of sky

are waiting for us

      Hi  Canada says   take a breath

The final poem is a mashup of experiences from this latest trip. Let me know if you like ‘em.

Siren Song

Ice on the Bow River

begins to bloom

    delicate clusters

crystal    

on   the surface of

the water

they gather together

become   a soft compact    

light and opaque as lemon sorbet

     solidifies slowly until

the river becomes still   

seems to hold itself

in suspended animation

soon   

after the days of clear skies   

after the bone -splintering cold

of nights

    the river sings

the ice moaning   and popping

     and humming

with the expansion

     and contraction

of winter lungs

it cajoles   calls us   hints

that we might walk upon it

    admire its transformation

underneath the beauty

that  seeming stillness

  the Bow River    slow    

sinuous

continues to flow