Spellbound
A place gets in.
It’s there, though you’ve
never been. You don’t think
of it often, but if you got the chance
you’d jump.
Grade 4 report on the Yukon.
Hours in the library . . .
population, industry, blah blah blah.
Drew flag by hand--dog on a shield,
more stirring than green and yellow stripes
of the Saskatchewan flag.
In the library, I discovered
artwork of Ted Harrison—people staring up
at pink and purple and yellow sky.
Read Robert Service’s "Spell of the Yukon":
I wanted the gold and I sought it
Fifteen years later, I find
myself on a plane to Yukon.
Look down at greyish-purple
peaks—the Rockies’ freak dwarf cousins.
See ugly industry shacks, a Boston Pizza, Canadian Tire,
skinny pine trees in this place
I dreamed about for years.
a land where the mountains are nameless
And the rivers all run God knows where
2 comments:
Love the imagery and detail of the flags in this poem.
I wonder if you could use the references to service and harrison throughout -- tied to both your imagined world and its reality counterpart?
Also, I find the first paragraph too vague. "A place gets in" What place? Gets in where? How?
liked it vera mucho.
could say where a place gets in. (the heart, the head?)
could maybe change the title. feels like that was where you started but then the poem itself moved away from it?
maybe if the title reflected service or harrison somehow? (unless that's a reference to something i just didn't pick up, which is entirely possible)
good sense of place and context overall - in very few lines.
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