Tombed
within, who knew
we’d
find a rusty filleting knife,
a
kettle half full of sticks, rags,
that
photo of a homesteader
in
a bent willow rocking chair.
That
man was each of our dads,
a
pipe and pouch in his hands,
his
smashed cowboy hat aslant
long
scraggly grey hair, and eyes
shining
deep as pulverized glass.
Who
would accuse another
of
accepting a Crown job after
seeing
the weariness in his face?
We
will forever feel alone
in
the wilds of Manitoba, where
suburbs
are rural municipal
cul-de-sacs,
wetlands are bogs,
grasslands
are woodlands halved
with
access roads, limestone
quarries
are airport fences
with
deer trapped behind
as
dry as paper bags, grain silos
are
NORAD Defense, pale beaches
are
whitecaps, a dirt bike track
is
an abandoned rail baron’s dream,
to
a falling sodden cabin,
in
the centre, somewhere,
amid
ceded Metis land.
Jay Stafinak: a half-breed, Sixties-Scooped, bastard poet wandering through Winnipeg's Crown, Seven Oaks, the surging homeland of the mighty Red River Metis. His book, Night Became Years, was nominated for the Governor General Award, the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award, and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. He is the Recipient of the 2015 Bliss Carmen Award for Poetry. Recently one of his poems was published - as a Baconian Cypher - for Brock University's Small Walker Press. He writes poems and helps raise his three daughters while studying medicines throughout the bushes of Pilot Mound. Every day he raises his glass in memory of Steven Heighton.
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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