In this series, I responded to Calgary
with a poem called "Calgary," which I'll read now.
Calgary, in the far west distance,
the lids of mountains, presumably the Rockies,
props for northern lights.
Into them, a knife way, highway one, umbilical of this town.
Calgary, born by mistake, wind built,
dumped at the foot of the hills.
Eroded down to there, overgrown with grass,
festooned with insects, roamed by prairie chickens,
supporting life, people, Indians, then oilmen,
football players, civil defense army police with flashlights,
professors, tax men, lawyers, mayors, faces flashing
in the northern lights.
Cutting themselves to pieces with apartments,
building, sand on sand eroding, pinched against the wind,
hopeless on the wrong side of the mountains, web
footed for the sea, all these, all these.
A boxed social of a city, hoax on dumbfounded prairie
chickens, lost belly button of the Canadian West.