Yarrow
There's the country somewhere outside the car.
The country where the maple fucks the elm
and the elm broods as if auditioning
for a new PBS mini-series.
There's a poetry where trees don't have sex,
when the yarrow observed from a car seat
can stand in, plain image, plain symbol,
and not be you observing me as overweight.
Outside, as the yarrow whips by, are towns
where Canadians happily live their lives,
unperturbed by those who were excluded
from Timmy's Can-Lit Bits Anthology.
Inside, the steady beat of George Strait songs,
coffee with diet hazelnut creamer.
Maybe I shouldn't have said anything
about the maple which gets so leafy.
By David McGimpsey
David McGimpsey
David McGimpsey lives in Montreal and is the author of several collections of poetry including Li'l Bastard, a nominee for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. He is also the author of the short fiction collection Certifiable and the award-winning critical study Imagining Baseball: America's Pastime and Popular Culture. Named by the CBC as one of the “Top Ten English language poets in Canada”, David's work was also the subject of the book of essays Population Me: Essays on David McGimpsey. A PhD in American Literature, David McGimpsey teaches in the English Department of Concordia University.
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