oh, Canada….
If I’d spent time outside today,
could’ve tasted the texture in air. So heavy;
what the weatherman excitedly calls ‘haze’
(beholden to the company that pays his check?)
(but his enthusiasm, genuine & I recall
all the times he’s repeated “everything
is a cycle” despite the contrary steamrolling
evidence – but I digress….)
Ashes of ash, of hickory and oak, of maple and pine
Old Growth singing ache into chest, leaving
tongue longing to record more than a ghost
of charred-flavour and this, this:
summoning up the night
I smelled seafoam and tasted salt
in the wash of a rained-out hurricane
hundreds of miles from the sea. Thousands
away now, from both
but still caught in a river of smoke.
