unlike my
daughter running and floating
in air like a
lark in the meadow
far, far from the corrupting cities
i drive through the rolling hills
taking also note of the abandoned
abundant agricultural machinery scattered
beside deteriorating log houses of the
prairie
a space i exchanged for shores of the
oceans
and at the end of the hot summer with rain
enough to keep me cool but no grassland
for me to graze, unlike the lavish cows
lewd horses, and lazy lamas, i ponder
but with no Pysanka, the talismanic power
of the Ukrainians nor the dream-catchers
of the first nation to transform
my misfortunes into a land of harvest
or that Albertan store house of gasoline
with a steady pumping of slow moving pumps
while i languish with hunger and a loss
of direction in this land of plentiful
plenty
