Ah, those beautiful names...

Thanks to Norma Kerby for her poem - a welcome response to the recent reports
of the Harper government's extensive spying on anti-oilsands groups. It's from a Terrace Art Gallery poetry anthology, The Rivers Speak, due to be launched this Friday, Nov. 22. It is a collaboration of eight visual artists and 22 poets, edited by Joan Conway and Katherine Bell. The book is being used to raise funding for the Terrace Art Gallery.

Lists of lovers

There are lists of lovers    river lovers    dangerous people

who murmur  in foreign tongues

Kitimat   Zymoetz   Kitsumkalum

They stand in front of hearings   speak to newspapers     sighing for

lovers they can never own

Babine   Bulkley   Kwinageese   Bear

Emotional people      careless dreamers of river waters rushing free

Exstew   Kasiks    Kispiox   Clore

Greedy people      they think that lovers are forever

but lovers only pass in the night

Kinskush   Kitsault   Kwinamuck   Dak

We have lists         lists of lovers     river lovers

writers of poems to angry waters

Stikine  Skeena  Spatsizi  Nass

good citizens come and go

they know that rivers    cold northern rivers   are not forever

money can buy warm embraces in

tropical seas

hotel pools gentle and soothing

whispering comforts

whispering   forget   forget   forget

But these lovers   these river lovers  northern river lovers  they cry out   they
will not be quiet   they shout  slogans   meet in rallies

never confess that rivers are lovers for moments not lifetimes

Lists of lovers   river lovers    Jim and Wade and Cheryl and Shannon       
Walter   Dennis   even Ali

We have their names.  We watch.  We listen.

Lists of lovers     who speak of rivers    northern rivers