homesteading near Vulcan, Alberta, 1907,
- a poem for my grandfather, (1886 - 1956), young farmer and teacher, then merchant and Vulcan Postmaster (1910 - 1949)
This ground breaks in long ideas.
Even the grasses wish
for wind swells of change.
I see my own desire
gleaming in the loam.
Rolling through my fingers,
it crumbles to a moist soil.
How like the world is skin.
How articulate my hand,
when everything it says
is masked in earth
and all that grows in earth.
By hand, plough and horse
I carve my first and last
will and testament.
The fruit of the furrows
I leave as long ideas
to sons and daughters
of daughters and sons.
This wide, flat land
imagines vertical lumber
framing a home and
fronting a port of trade
on the prairie shore.
Wheat for the world,
wheat in exchange for the world,
passing back and forth
in folded paper through my window,
my vertical window
to a long idea
which I leave behind.
2000
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