Jasper Glen
Saskatchewan
Disguised here there is nothing here
But a red barn, and a yellow silo—outcast.
I almost didn’t see it with my own mouth wide.
Saskatchewan has no shadows
Except when summer’s oppressive heat
Invites piratical swarms of horseflies.
Saskatchewan, unfolding still, a wide opened
Book of spells, its yellowed pages.
Field bonded to field, the woven plain.
Mistress of a yellow kilt lain, her first surface pelt.
Her father’s first certificate of sheet barn.
Regulating the range—A particular chemical.
News crop out. Steer farm. The fourth largest
Farm in Saskatchewan, has picture + number
Of acres = medley of yellows and browns.
This province is pressed for space.
We need, believe it or not, real estate wants.
Un-human scale: and the birds’ eye
Virgin drawing, for I am piloting that black bird?
Step back from what the eye can see
Suicidal vehicle, why carbonic
As long as the elements of life
Actual elements of life exist
From the black nonsense of space
Packed chemically in a barrel first
And the world is black.
I bring you an onomatopoeia
From the gunshot.
Province an auditorium
For our skins now as if populous.
It is not a sin in the field killing
A done-for animal.
Saskatchewan as a planet.
Standing pat there, paradoxical.