I come here at last
to possess my country,
to drink in its clear waters –
White Cloud, Hay and Griffith Islands,
an opened hand
reached into Georgian Bay
and beyond the grey North
stretched to the top of the world.
Wiarton, the Bruce,
beaches of smoothed stones,
freshness, life that frees from scum,
the Golden Horseshoe's iron crud,
crusts of its dead smoke
where we are required to live
"as if to breathe ...."
Refuse it. Enter at deep North,
searching depths of the glazed waters,
where rainbows leap
in early light,
the sun and water bleed
to stones washed white.
My heart is crushed
by a beauty of second birth.
Pine's the Canadian Tree
(The Tower Poetry Society Press 1975)
