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

Beached on Haida Gwaii

Norma Kerby sent me this gathering of poems after celebrating the launch of filling Station's northern BC writers edition in Terrace last week.

Beached on Haida Gwaii

in Hecate Strait, winds can blow over 150 km per hour

shallow waters waves tower more than 10 meters high

in Hecate Strait, any boat is a toy for the winter storms

           

Months after Randy Morrison spent eighteen hours in the frigid waters of Hecate Strait

building Randy Morrison with eighteen hours of torture in Hecate Strait

                                    W.C.B. ruling suspended  his claim

                        legs   in pain    skin burns from salt in stinging spray

                                           a doctor claims it's in his head

but they will be appealing        Randy Morrison           through shifting

            apparitions of bearded men that shout from boats of

            cold emulsion oil and ice like frozen drops of

                                            Caribbean sherbert lime

shipwrecked

lady at the store said

            he drove the boat full-throttle into the beach

                                    that or drown he told the insurance company

but in town they all know

buybacks and lack of quota

make fishing like wishing        to win the lottery

                                                                           beautiful lines       all wood

                                                                                                she fills with sand each tide

                                                                                    lists to one side

                                                                                           beached

excised

in the fast cold sweep

                                    of the flying wind

nightmares are flung into

                                                irrelevance they

            tumble off across the dunes so quickly there is no time to say goodbye

else

            do not be angry

when i say that i love the wind

                                                it was only that i would

                                                            fly

                                                                                    like a gull

                                                                                    hung suspended in the storm though

there was a gale

             wind so strong i

                        could not move but

                                                behind the dune

                                                a flock of seagulls

                                                waited

too windy even for them

soupfin shark

the shark had thrashed

a hole in the sand

                                                caught by the storm and

                                                falling tide

                                                it died in the

                                                sun

long bullet body

crescent slit of razor teeth

white skin scraped pink

                                                in cold north waters

                                                so odd

                                                a beast

                                                the currents sweep

                                                from other shores

glass ball

there

                                                                        caught between two cobbles

                                                                                    green glass

                                                                        base of a fishing float

            long journey from Japan bobbing across on foamy rollers

                                    winter storm     glass ball

                                                                                    smashed against the rocky shoals

                                                                                                pulverized to crystal sands

                                                except the bottom          dimpled where

                                    the master paused

                                       drew in his breath before he blew the           perfect bubble

                                                            emerald

                                                                     it glistens

                                                     green as cold Pacific waters

scallop

it was only a

                                                            tiny shell

                                                            pink and finely fluted

fairy scallop we called it

not knowing how such a                                  delicate

                                                            wing

                                                            landed on the cobble beach

in the gloom of the office it sits

on

the window sill

speaking of                                          winds so fierce

                                                            there was nothing but

                                                            the land and the ocean

                                                            fighting

Tlell

there are dunes

shifting dunes

                        moved by winds so wild

                        you lean

                                                a triangle into the frenzied

                                                fury

                                                waves curl back in funnels there are

dunes

with feral cattle

ancient village sites where once the

Haida raced before the storm

                    before the smallpox came

village on the shore

living on the fringe of the ocean

                        knowing that the edge of

                                    the sky    is the edge to

                                                    the other edge

                                                    of the ocean