Poets in a dangerous world

[vaneramos]

Photo: Wellington County Museum and Archives, Sunday afternoon.

~~~~~~~~~~

ghostsandrobots is coming to visit this weekend and we'll find out how far that conjoined-at-the-brain feeling goes. President George W. Bush has planned his first official visit to Canada on Monday in order to clean up the mess and prevent her stories from spreading. These are exciting times for poets. I wonder whether I should call somebody and warn them she's planning to defect, just to make her border crossing more interesting.

I left Guelph at 4 p.m. yesterday. The sun had almost set. Silken autumn clouds covered the westward sky, spreading an early gloom over the distance. Darkness comes early like an enchanted sleep, and dawn arrives uncertainly. Canada shudders under this descending season. Mild weather keeps flying at us, a puzzle, the answer to our abuse of earth and air. In these wan and weakling days I read more reports: global warming is hitting the high altitudes hardest. Zoologists are studying its effect on caribou and reindeer, a species essential to the health of Arctic ecosystems. The Arctic Ocean may begin thawing completely every summer. Danny told me Churchill, Manitoba still doesn't have snow; they usually have a foot or more by now. The Prairie growing season lengthens, but rainfall has become erratic. Some years they have drought, others they receive so much rain they can hardly harvest the crops before snow flies.

We can see and feel the changes. It will only accelerate as time goes on. Why are our legislators not looking and listening? Environmental disaster keeps speeding toward us like a freight train and our politicians stand on the tracks with their eyes dazzled, babbling about weapons of mass destruction. One thing is bound to destroy our sacred, cherished way of life. It's cooking right here in our North American industries and households. When will they understand the real war must be against our habitual consumption and abuse of resources, and the longer we wait, the more certainly we will lose?

Highway 401 between London and Windsor must be the most boring stretch of freeway anywhere. The land is flat. In some places to can see for miles, but there's nothing to see except a few meagre stands of trees. You don't even find vast expanses like on the Prairies. This is some of the most arable land in Canada, but it's chopped into bits and pieces.

I might as well drive it at night. Farms drift by like island specks of light. Perspective shifts in the darkness; nearer lights slide faster as if caught in a slipstream. The night is composed of invisible curtains, layered into the distance, each moving at a different pace. Combines work deep into the evening, churning through clouds of gold-lit dust. Banks of silos, dimly lit, loom across the horizon. I wonder what climate change will mean here in Ontario's breadbasket, the flatlands of Essex, Kent and Middlesex counties, with roads and yawning ditches that run straight to nowhere.

I was relieved to finally reach my parents' house, walk through the door to the familiar scents of home roasted together with leg of lamb.

Mom and Dad drove me back this morning. For the rest of the week I'll be writing my novel and trying to make the place presentable for the surveillance cameras that are bound to attend ghostsandrobots' visit. Maybe I can transform it from "ground zero" to mildly Bohemian.

Comments

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, you haven't seen our house if you're worried about tidying up. Apparently we have more in common than our Vulcan mind meld. :)

I'm excited. Then again, I won't be driving the boring 401. I see it on my directions, but only for .2 miles.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

If you follow the email directions I sent, you'll skip the 401 altogether. But this part of the province isn't as dull as further west. If memory serves (I've driven that way twice), I79 will be the most tedious part.

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

Eagle's Nest,

I'll fake out the government agents and take a completely different route. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

--The Little Bohemian

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

how exciting! i hope you both report fully in your ljs afterward. :)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Good evening, Ethel Thayer! I'm sure we'll write about it, although total disclosure might ruin our conspiracy. ;-)