musée mia burrus

We Call it Canada

Here is a poem I wrote on the occasion of Canada’s 150th birthday, initially inspired by the first line of Gwedolyn MacEwan’s Dark Pines Under Water….”This land like a mirror turns you inward”. What followed was four plus pages of notes about Canada and the notions of big-C and little-c country. I completed a version of the poem in time for a June 2017 Cobourg Poetry Workshop reading celebrating Canada and Canadian poets, but fiddled with it for another year while working on a collage setting for the poem, which is displayed below.

But let’s get to the fun! The many kinds of ice and snow we settlers care not to name….snow falling, snow on the ground, crystalline snow on the ground, snow used to make water, ice in general, freshwater ice for drinking, slushy ice by the sea, snow in which one sinks, what can become a house, a drift of hard snow that formed after a storm, skim ice, new ice, rime on plants, ice that breaks after its strength has been tested with a harpoon, ice that cracked and refroze then the tide changed, snow in large flakes, bloody snow, bright snow, dirty snow, deep snow, heavy wet snow, nasty snow, slippery snow, soft snow…..

 

                              This land is pink and undefended
                               on a map, though on the ground 
                                one snowy frozen step
                                 is very like the last, and you’ll find 
                                  no welcome mat.  
  
                                   Still, we’ll welcome you 
                                    (while winking at the killing 
                                     cold and winter 
                                      sun that will not rise 
                                       above a frown).  
  
                                        We slip with tipsy fervour 
                                          towards the US 
                                           borderline, smug 
                                            that Borealis has our backs, 
                                             cloaked snugly in the mythic 
                                              north, it’s keening wind, 
                                             its endless night, muskeg 
                                           sparse with blackened 
                                         spruce, tundra dense 
                                      with crazy-making bugs,
                                     those fifty words for ice and snow
                                    that we don’t know, 
                                  and always something farther 
                                farther north.  
  
                             Famous dark parka, we ever turn
                          our backs on your
                        creation, heedless of the grace 
                      with which you’re weft
                    of land and water, bear,
                  and bird, anishinaabe
               and innu, wisdom
             and courage, the spirit gifts
           of gichi manitou.
  
  
  
 Mia Burrus
 Nov 2018