Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers
On a March morning, the poet opens his senses to the Weaselhead flats along the Elbow River at the southwest edge of the city. He observes flora and fauna, mud, breeze, and “the waking river.” A landscape caught in the slow motion of a Calgary spring.
shine toppled trees roots gesturing exposed and worn down
in the intimacy of river, wind, seasons, as the wrinkles
around a woman’s eyes are to the land itself touched
tenderly, even to the formed spaces where anchoring roots
ache in the remembered river bank soil, defying birds,
leaving footsteps venial, as if to say an eternal thing was
Stuart Ian McKay, “Weaselhead Variations,” in Writing the Land: Alberta Through its Poets (House of Blue Skies, 2007)