Gabriel Bridge South Saskatchewan River

Wait for it, leave it, keep your

eye on it, slap it, drink it,

wait for it, get it, get it, take it

taste it, make it, naked, call it,

write it, remember it.

We’ll have to talk about it.

Let’s wait and see it out.

It’ll wait. It’ll have to.

We’ll get there, we’ll talk, just wait it out.

Emily Carr stands beside the train

feeling the swell of words drain away.

Her fingers trace the curve of obtrusions

on the horizon, each tree,

hill, house a blurred gesture carved

through diesel odour, smouldered iron.

This is that what this get there did that

that makes me fuck off you can’t he should

evening for shoes things haven’t changed much

going to Toronto.

Pemmican is a dream of brown like a cope worn clergy, a

strong dose of hell and damnation, a rose that entangles

pilsner gold drinks, the dancing gold around prohibition,

inhibition, the gambling gold, the gambol. There is a spiral

working its way through the train, like cosmic ants outside of

gravity, consuming metal. She can feel everything from fur

trimmed gauntlets to the cold hands of the unemployed on

the cool night roof to Ottawa. Her mother gave black beads

to new mothers in place of lace. Dark stars that shine of

home on train swept rivers.