South of Calgary about 70 miles is a place
called high river Alberta in which
lives a hermit Canadian novelist who's often been compared
with Faulkner because of his hermitism
although he doesn't write anywhere near as well.
And I drove down there when I first
came to Calgary to have a look at high river
and to fix the novels I'd read in my mind.
Drove around to this man's house,
but was too nervous to go in and see him
partly because I hadn't read his latest
novel, which had just come out.
[LAUGHTER]
"High river Alberta, the drugstore seeming
is molded plastered made in a week
many years ago when the CPR tracks
were attracting people North.
Mounties and priests curious Braves
guarding the peaceful grass turned
under the chunky black dirt falling
in the shade of green elevators.
Cows discovered the big country bringing men with them,
horses to mount the Indians and carry them into the Rockies.
Now they never come back, but move
South along the pike eight miles from town as the country moves.
It's a pleasant town yet curiously old in New Alberta.
One side of a Main Street falls fronted against a railroad
no passengers watch from."