[Editor's Note: This is the last of 10 current Canadian 'blockbuster poems' running each Friday in The Tyee. Find out about the idea of the series and read the previous poems here.]
in praise of bad things
praise milfoil weed, long green strands snagging the motors
of powerboat;
praise man-eating grizzly bears and up-tight Iranians;
praise rust, mold,
moths, racoons, buzzards, housemice, sharks; everything
that breaks us
down and cleans up the mess and drives us on to think and
plan and turn
ourselves about
praise the hawk that steals the heron's fish; praise the heron raising her
true harsh cry of protest; praise the biker gang of local crows and the
seven angelic screaming gulls that wheel about together at last calling:
drop it
drop it
drop it
and the humans on the shore
praise them
that call out
yay gulls
yay crows
go go go go
hawk
go
From Backup to Babylon (New Star, 2006).
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