Home
Home? I left Canada by accident
Four decades ago, drawn by sheer novelty
And climate. Then stayed, as America fell
To a foolish and unstoppable war.
After my state elected movie stars
I went to Toronto, spent time with new friends
Nearly all of them border-crossers
Who had fled the land where I'm still an alien.
Home is family, friends: six months in Phayao
Then six in Berkeley, not a hellish place
Nor a place I can stay for long, where my granddaughter,
Having heard I was leaving, would not talk to me,
But dug furiously by herself on the silent beach.
"What's this?" "I'm building a bridge, from here to Thailand."
From: Mosaic Orpheus, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009.