Greenstorm's Journal

Two poems from the same seed. This is one of the sets I was nervous about posting: one, because of the subject matter and how personally it touches my life, and two, because it’s one line that I wasn’t sure what to do with, so I tried two very different approaches: a pantoum which is very very formal, and free verse. I’m curious if there’s one of the two you like better than the other? It’s neat how the pantoum drives a particular message and led me to think differently about what I was trying to say.

#26 Vancouver 2: Pantoum

My city is a mother who eats her young
We shelter ourselves from the truth
We take our lives in our hands if we run
Believe nowhere else can we find a safe roof

We shelter ourselves from the truth
Only her people are safe to live among
Believe nowhere else can we find a safe roof
Those elsewhere must all be shunned

Only her people are safe to live among
Too frightened to look for proof
Those elsewhere must all be shunned
Once we feel safe we hold aloof

Too frightened to look for proof
We who tolerate this, what have we become
Once we feel safe we hold aloof
While so many fall unsung

We who tolerate this, what have we become?
We take our lives in our hands if we run
While so many fall unsung
My city is a mother who eats her young


#27 Vancouver 1: just words

My city was a mother that ate her young
Spit the vulnerable in the streets
And turned to smile in sparkling world-class recreation,
In green forests and towering mountains to the rich.

She courted me with the promise of,
If not riches, then some kind of security
Trading time for money and money for
A roof over my head.

She said she had the only friends that were good enough
That elsewhere they’d hurt me, they wouldn’t understand,
Those same friends seethed at strangers
If they were greeted in the street.

Every year I planted a tree and moved
And planted a tree and moved
And waved to the trees I’d planted from afar
As they fruited in strangers’ yards.

I do regret the compromise.
So many times I stayed
When I should have hopped on a rainbow
And ridden right out of town.

My friends stayed long enough that displacement is invisible to them.
Relief not to do the work of moving,
Relief not to find a new place to live,
They have that, but no one mentions roots they’re torn from,
A home they wish to know forever,
The desire for familiar walls.
Whether in dark comedy or enthusiastic compliance
They displace themselves yearly
Crossing the oceans and celebrating how they are not at home.

I stayed long enough that displacement etched into my bones.
Later, when I found my home
And the wildfires came so we left for awhile
I couldn’t imagine a homecoming and was left
Arms wrapped around myself
Lying on the carpet
Willing my soul out of my body
So my body could finally be returned
Could finally be laid back in a home. In my home.
Just so I could return somewhere for once.

My city was a mother that ate her young
And the scars of her teeth will always be on me
I escaped her and when people ask I tell the story
With a light smile at parties because in this she was right:
Though these friends welcome strangers it’s true that
Elsewhere, as within my city, people don’t understand.

My coworker takes guesses at breakup every year. It's been as early as April 6 and as late as I think May 16 in the last twenty years. He has a neighbour identify a particular strip across the lake that has to be ice-free. This has been a long cold spring; I guessed May 12th. The prize is bragging rights, which is why my PDA self can participate. I have serious issues with competition.

The long cold spring hasn't stopped it being a dry spring. The ground was dead dry last fall and we got a normal amount of snow or just barely above normal. There are spots on the mountain where we did controlled fires last fall and it seems like with snow off them they're still smouldering this spring. Uncomfortable.