Saffron

When the Glooscap Trail in Nova Scotia

got too Glooscappy for me, I turned south.

All the buckeyes and all the baseball games

I’d need to score to prove I didn’t mind.

Not that I grew so blessed with freedom

I outlived personifying the wind

(it ‘murmured,’ it ‘howled,’ it even ‘bled’)

or outlived those who spoke for literature.

Wherever they were, every sentence began

‘Poetry is . . . ’ and zeroed in, like a hawk,

to how foolish it was I spent seven years

writing sonnets about orange soda pop.

My lungs were born to proof asbestos,

my teeth edged to tear open Doritos.

Poetry was bound to love Nova Scotia,

what with its winds singing Taylor Swift songs.