1. Home Here
Your Dad was into Thoreau
And there was the Natural History Club
In our neck of the woods
Back in the day before the blue-box rules
And the balloon-nosed alcy
Incautiously turning junk into money
Makes strange cents and leads
You to strange corners outside of
Natural History.
Virginia tobacco in an Arabian desert
And the uneducated shaman
With their budza sawing pranks
Covering your hands with sweet sap
As you reach in close to the fire
Ovens within ovens for ripening
Those toxic weeds and then
You are off to the auction
A couple hundred, a thousand?
After Greece and Israel and parts
Of Africa and the mango milk
Where will this farmer go?
Acres and acres of farmland in Surrey
Reurbanized, deargicized
You settle in an Okanagan roost
To wage a war for wine but
Lose the bottle-making battle
To the logs collecting round your vines.
It was on that hike through
Mushroom spouting stumps
You saw a mountain lion with
A tail as ling as your arm
She lets out a house at purr
And later that night by the fire
A blood-curdling hunter scream
That shook the whole bio region
And opened your mind to the pool.
Just a water hole with the power
To transport you to the other side
Out of body and beyond time
Infecting your later life as you
Catch yourself in a mid-campus dash
Diving back into the spaceless void
Wrestling with the complexities of
Coupland’s last generation to die
And this was the start of your
Ecoliterate life.
2. Mindset Change
Rich man in a rich land
Not much care for the ground
Until Wayne of the wooly socks
Took us out past Duffy Lake
The fallen friend point the way
To the fabulous glacier
And winter’s first snow
Caught us out in our shorts
At the age of thirteen
Sky opening up to give
Back the calm that nature had
For original movers and shakers
On the ever-changing land
A decade or so later
When the enviro-club began
And I could not get that
Cloud-opening moment
Out of my head
3. Tranquility in May
My dad would getaway to climb
South Korean frozen waterfalls
Frames placed on our walls
My little boots would dangle down
From the camper trailer bumper
As the rickety summer family trips
Would start on the last day of school
The classroom windows facing Jasper
Would call out to me adventure
But reports and reflections got in the way
Until I was called to the coast
Although I couldn’t Tofino, not yet
But found my way to Long Beach
And he Rocky Mountain shaped waves
4. Constance Islander
Remember me back in Germany
In the year I grew up there
Stuttgart to Munich ain’t no thing
But boating way the best way to go
All the animals helped me find my place
Walking the dog down to the Danube
And the cat in my Canadian room
Recreates the alpine home
Where bakers closed on Sundays
And nothing would open for 24 hours
5. What Environment There?
Ontario was where she began
Moving out to Saudi Arabia
Can you find your mom’s burka?
Will Santa make it to the compound?
She made it back to the cabin-filled land
Such an opportunity not to be missed
The huge green forest and lots of green
To canoe and to camel in her childhood
6. From NGO to NGO
He followed his parents when they went
From Egypt to Nairobi and into Sudan
With the Disneyness holidays in
Lush Kenyan grasslands
The haboob were hilarious
As they blocked out the sun
Clogged up the lungs
And brought tears to the eyes
Each lagoon had a shark
And the rain produced frogs
For the snake wranglers to collect
And feed their money-making scheme
Five dollars on the viper
Come see its teeth
The anaconda just got way
During the matinee
He made his own
Intermission with
Ant vs. grasshopper.
7. The Edge of the Cut
It all began on the mountain
Green means you’re good
But blue makes it better
During a post-lesson run
Off just beyond the edge
Where the city spreads out
You could fall off and die
But was anyone screaming
All those other skiers came
Back from somewhere below
They have to fill the chairs
And teeter in the t-bars
But the city, shining through
The white wisps of clouds
Were the only edge between
A place on the slope and home
Each mound rolled out anew
The closer you get to the end
So when the clouds clear
There is no natural boundary
8. A Typology for New Trails
A Seattle scientist sets up home
On the Sammamish plateau
And establishes the original
Hillside home and hikes its trails
His Winnipeg roots cannot provide
Yet his daughter goes back
To waterski with aunts and uncles
She sets up a way to track trails
Each time she is in a new place
When she is in the race, getting lost
Going out of her head
Victoria trails have bunnies
London parks are manicured
Barcelona grow the wild palms
All helping her cross the country
Sketching a place for her discoveries
9. Levelling Out
From Toronto Tarantah
Kids kept away from TV
Had biking and climbing
Skiing or playing tag
Going up or gliding down
Each place as an adult
Had the up-and-down feel
Osaka is a concrete basin
Kyoto had shrine-filled hills
And now here in Vancouver
We get trapped inside
Yet just a kilometre away
The beach waits with inner peace.
10. Another Tale
Ontario has some dangerous environments
You heard me, there is so much waste!
The negativity of Scarborough will get in your face
And my grandfather’s island swarmed with horseflies
Even a swim in the lake was like tea-coloured swill
Had me wishing for the tiled grid of my pool
These outdoors were like shock therapy
Driving me away to he oil-producing desert
No threshold between our place and the cockroach
While scorpions took heir babies into my sink
And the cat chews on another chameleon
While tarantulas hid in lawnmowers shed
At last in BC nature seems more natural
11. School Meant LAC
My Mom thought it was the ADHD
And sent me to the cram schools
When what I had was visual-tactileness
My only escape was the week or so
Outdoors at the school where
Nature surround me with play
And songs like Johnny Appleseed
It would lead to a life of horse vaulting
And digging up clay for my glaze
That were skills I picked up
After my CBC schoolmates went
To Sauder and I to Emily Carr
And that made all the difference.
12. North Van and Spiralling Out
A huge forest playground
Summer, after school, weekend
Camping under the star
And next to the bunnies
That trip to Edmonton cut short
So the boyfriends could back
To their computers and culture
You didn’t even have a cel phone
Breaking up and moving on
To be a rock star teacher
In a Burmese haunted land
Away from the microchip’s grasp
There were only so many dishes
And princely proposals you could take
Before you came back here
To reconnect with your land