1

An armoured lung,

a living castle of barnacle

and bone; a peaceful

leviathan moving with

the ease of a dark cloud.

2

The child knows more

about the gray whale

than the adult.

When given crayons

the adult says he does

not know how to draw.

The child is already drawing

the gray whale

with blue and pink.

3

In the world of opposites

the gray whale is an ocean cave

populated by sea otters.

4

No I didn’t see the whale but

the man behind me at Starbucks did.
Everyone was talking about it
and someone said  “did you

see the whale?” his eyes danced
and he shouted across the store
I did, he kept saying. I did.
I saw the whale.

5

And the Whale said

Behold the natural world.

6
The woman died and the man

grew frail and ashen.

His life slowed to the pace

of the gray whale.

7
Forget the secrets of Elephants
The gray whale thinks in music.

8
In the Oregon aquarium, the children sit

below the skeleton of the Gray Whale

drinking cola.

9
The thing is, my dad doesn’t like people much.

We saw the whale on the pier outside the market.

Even after the whale had gone, my dad wanted to stay

and talk to everyone else who had seen it.

10

Do not live in habit. Do not take the most

basic assumptions for granted. Consider

the city of whales. If you seek it with your eyes

you will never find it. It lives only in the symphonics

of the ocean. It’s music is to the ear

as the pavement is to your foot.

11

Can you believe its August. Can you believe

there is a whale in English Bay. How lucky

we are to walk through Stanley Park.  My heart

beats at the speed of birds.  I’ve stopped believing

in loneliness. Here we are.  It’s summer.

I want to be in love.

12
Some were trying to decipher what the whale

was telling us. Other already knew.

13

And there you were

below the mountains

in the heart of the city

gazing at the gray whale.

You must change your life.

Are you bring­ing any fruits or veg­eta­bles into Canada?

Have you vis­ited a farm in the last 30 days?

Are you now or have you ever been a mem­ber of a group that dis­agreed with government?

Do you intend to ride the zip line?

Do you approve of prod­uct place­ment in movies?

Do you like my uniform?

Are you bring­ing into Canada any cur­rency and/or mon­e­tary instru­ments of a value totalling CAN$10,000 or more per person?

Have you ever assaulted a police offi­cer with a stapler?

In describ­ing my uni­form, would you say that it a) inspires respect or b) breeds contempt?

Have you ever dreamed of shoot­ing a fas­cist dic­ta­tor off a Spanish balcony?

Do you approve of John Furlong?

Can you give me an exam­ple of the words in your head and how they might be used while in Canada?

Do you vote?

Are you now or have you ever been a per­son who car­ries MasterCard?

Were you aware of the Oka upris­ing, and if so, whose side were you on?

Remind me again about the zip line.

Do you read poetry?

Do you believe in home­less­ness as a right of the people?

If you were Canadian, and if it were pos­si­ble to do so, would you vote for John Furlong?

Does the colour of your socks match the colour of your pants?

Do your chil­dren own an effigy, stuffed or oth­er­wise, of the Olympic mascot?

Our pre­mier rode the zip line. Did you see that? It looks awesome.

Please arrange the fol­low­ing terms in order of pref­er­ence, start­ing with the least impor­tant: Health Care, Education, the Environment, Homelessness, Logo Placement at Sporting Events.

Do you now or have you ever owned a copy of Raffi’s Baby Beluga?

Do you own a cell phone?

Are you car­ry­ing any printed mat­ter that illus­trates same-sex love?

Are you bring­ing into Canada any firearms or other weapons?

Did you know that each year, more Canadians trust RBC Royal Bank® for their mort­gage solu­tions than any other provider?

What is the total mon­e­tary value of the goods you will be leav­ing in Canada?

Let’s go back to my uni­form for a minute, you gotta admit it’s pretty fuck­ing awesome.

Do you or have you ever lis­tened to Democracy Now?

Can you fin­ish the fol­low­ing sen­tence? Baby bel­uga in the deep blue ______________.

What colour is your heart?

Do you believe in global warming?

Have you ever pur­chased No Name brand prod­ucts? You know, the ugly yel­low ones?

If while in Canada you were tasered, would you be upset or go into car­diac arrest?

Do you sup­port an inter­na­tional unelected and roam­ing fourth tier of gov­ern­ment as set out by a non-existent char­ter of the
IOC?

If your gov­ern­ment acted against the prin­ci­ples of democ­racy, would you be com­pelled to action or would you just tell your
friends you are miffed?

Do you ever expe­ri­ence emo­tions stronger than miffment?

If some­one you knew spoke up against your gov­ern­ment, would you a) lis­ten or b) think that was a lit­tle weird?

Which of the fol­low­ing does not fit? Osama bin Laden, Louis Riel, Chris Shaw, Gordon Campbell.

When asked, will you keep the flow of traf­fic mov­ing smoothly?

How long will you be staying?

For the 14 female ski jumpers petitioning to be included
in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver

Despite the glory of color it’s easy to be the butterfly;
It’s hard to be the dog or to remain like the river stone.
For Christ sake little lady, sit down you’ve been told.

Because he thought that a woman short of breath was an affront to good manners,
Baron Pierre de Courbertin founded the modern Olympics with only the strength
of men in mind. The heft and depth of sport surely could not be good
for the reproductive organs of a lady—In 1896 at the first modern Olympics,
Stamati Revithi watched the men’s marathon and the next day started out
on her own forty kilometer run. She could not enter the stadium to finish,
as the men had done the previous day, so with one lap around the entire stadium
she finished the run that was thought impossible for a woman to complete.

The most unaesthetic sight the human eyes could contemplate, De Courbertin said,
was the female athelete. In 1922 Alice Milliat held a women’s Olympics
in Paris where eighteen women broke world records in sport.
De Courbertin demanded that Milliat drop the Olympic moniker from her games.
She refused until he agreed to integrate ten women’s events into the Olympics.
Milliat dropped the Olympic moniker from her games but Courbertin
only added five female track and field events to the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.

For the 1928 games the Canadian women’s Olympic team practiced
for the Olympic relay by passing the baton on the deck of the ship
that sailed them to Europe. At the same time a contingent of Canadian men
travelled to Amsterdam to petition the IOC to do the right thing
and drop female sport from the Olympics. The media called
the Canadian women’s team the Matchless Six for their athletic ability.

The New York Times called one of them, Ethel Catherwood, “the prettiest girl
of the games.” She became known as the Saskatoon Lily, for her “flower-like face.”
Surely, it was said, the Saskatoon Lily would become a movie star
but Catherwood was an athlete. She said she would rather gulp poison
than try her hand at motion pictures. She won gold in the high jump
and remains the only Canadian women to win a solo gold in track in field.

That same year the women ran the 800 metre race so hard that they crossed
the finish line and fell to the ground to catch their breath. The men of the IOC
found this disquieting. The 800 meter women’s race would not be reinstated
until 1968 in Mexico where Enriqueta Basilio would become the first woman
to light the Olympic cauldron.

Eva Dawes was a weak child and her father thought exercise
would strengthen her. He built her a high jumping pit
at her school. At a track meet in 1926 she won two gold medals
in the under 18 category. The officials then refused to let her jump
with the adults until her father walked onto the pitch,
grabbed the microphone and pleaded with the crowd to intervene.
The officials let Dawes jump again and she won another gold that day.

In 1935 she wanted to see life outside of Ontario
so she accepted an invitation to travel to the Soviet Union.
When she returned she was suspended from amateur sport
for cavorting with communists. The next year she boycotted
the Nazi hosted Olympic Games and sailed for Barcelona
to compete in the People’s Olympiad, championed
by trade unions, socialists and communists, then cancelled
with the first shots of the Spanish Civil War.

The athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen gave birth to her second child,
immediately started training, and six weeks later competed
in the 1946 European Championships. By 1948 she was back
in shape, held many world records but still the media thought
she was too old to represent her country and that she should stay home
to take care of her children. She won four gold medals at the 1948 Olympics
They called her The Flying House Wife.

In 1973 former Wimbledon singles champion Bobby Riggs
claimed that women didn’t have the strength to play tennis properly
and that he would beat any woman alive by virtue of his manhood.
He beat Margaret Court on Mother’s Day of that year.

He said “I want Billie Jean King. I want the women’s lib leader!”
He wore a “Men’s Liberation” T-shirt to practice for his match
with King and said that he wanted to be the number one chauvinist pig.
Tennis player Rosie Casals called Riggs “an old man who walks like a duck,
can’t see, can’t hear and besides,” she said, “he’s an idiot.”

A team of football players carried Billie Jean King
into the Astrodome while Bobby Riggs road in
on a chariot pulled by women. Billie Jean King beat him
three straight sets in a row.

Listen: here they come again trying to screw things up for the men. In 2005
the President of the International Ski Federation, Gian Franco Kasper, said
“Ski jumping is just too dangerous for women. It’s not appropriate for ladies
from a medical point of view.”

The chivalry playbook? For the Continental Cup in Germany the men’s
ski jumping team slept in a hotel while the women were billeted
in a farmhouse and barn, with a pile of manure outside their window,
awoken to a farm cat eating their food. Or they slept in a post office
in St Moritz, and under a dining room table in Trondheim.

It is easy to be the butterfly. It’s hard to sleep in the barn.

Perhaps your breasts are not aerodynamic.
Perhaps jumpsuits will increase the popularity of your sport.
“Come her little darling and I’ll teach you how to spread your V-style wider.”

At the top of the cantilevered tower you envision yourself in flight
and prepare your body to react without thought. You tighten the straps
of your helmet, position your goggles, slide onto the starting bar
to watch the wind work the flags with the possibility of flight
as you slide your feet ahead in the track, fold down
and zip into the inrun—you feel the compression
of the curve. You are over the knoll.
If you bend your knees you lose control.
You master the airfoil and steer with the slightest movement of your hands.
You look straight ahead and command every turn and nuance of posture.
You are flying. There is no other explanation.
Your body is muscle and memory held up by the wind.

Go to www.wsj2010.com and sign the petition.

The ser­vice sta­tion is bro­ken
and the cars sleep like bod­ies of bee­tles
pinned in line by the care­ful
hand of an entomologist.

The sky opens like a cab­i­net
and inside there is blue
but then quickly
clouds move and the door
slams shut. A col­lapse
of black on the ground
and down each street
there is no sound
or move­ment at all.

Somewhere this is art.

Somewhere a place like this
opens and an eye peers in.

Somewhere this is a col­lec­tion
worth pol­ish­ing. A lit­tle red mail­box.
The cor­ner gro­cer. Streets and gut­ter grates.

Somewhere what mat­ters mat­ters,
the sky opens and the world is unique,
peo­ple come out and the neigh­bour­hood
insin­u­ates itself into the present and past.

For a moment it lasts.

For a moment we are common.

of the rededication of Mountain View Cemetery July 10^th, 2009

At Lacy Madden’s grave I’m thinking

about the Battle of Vimy Ridge and Hannah Montana,

the pop starlet my daughter dreams of in hues of burnt sugar

and sass. I don’t know for sure if Lacy fought at Vimy

but I do know his regiment did and that he had left England

and arrived in Saskatoon only a few months before going to war

for this country that had just taken him in.

Lacy took a bullet and on the battle field a surgeon

shortened his arm and drew him a picture of what he had done:

so as to explain things to the doctor back home.

Lacy came back from the war and moved west, where

he bought a piano on Granville Street from a store

that closed and became a mortuary. So hear it is:

music and death and my daughter in my living room

pecking out Hannah Montanna on Lacy Madden’s piano.

Can you believe it? They were able to make pop music worse.

I’m trying to read the cemetery. I’m trying to forget Poltergeist

Zombie skin and the bitter Braille of horror’s myopic blunder;

and the poor young men who recently came to this cemetery

on a public day dressed as zombies only to be greeted by

a Filipino choir and a lecture on Chinese burial rights.

How do we take death seriously?

How do we find the funniest person buried in the earth?

The men from the Second Narrows Bridge are in the ground.

The Japanese Coolies who built the railway. Joe Fortes

who himself must have kept dozens of people out

of this cemetery.

I’m trying to imagine the cemetery as parchment.

I’m trying to see the punctuation and the minor story.

Harry Jerome crossing the finish line in ’64 but also the man

in the crowd who watched him do it but whose memories

weren’t preserved in the molasses of a bronze effigy,

but are instead kept in a shoe box to be sold at a garage sale

ten blocks south of here on some static Sunday.

Or I imagine the veterans whose headstones sat atop rocks

and the man who pulled up these rocks and trucked them

down to Stanley Park to set them into the seawall.

Where do we connect with the past if not in these acres

of peace in the city? This park, the lavender and an infant stream

where marble text knocks our lives down to haiku and sunshine.

There is a garden in the heart of the cemetery

where thousands of river rocks have been placed. I’m thinking now

of the importance of ritual and whether we think we deserve it.

Each of the river rocks is a marker for a child

to have their name on a stone whereas

until now their life has gone unmarked.

How does a death or a life change each stone?

A few years ago a man renovated the top floor of a house

in Toronto. He stripped and smashed the walls in and when

he found a package bundled in newspaper, it felt as light

as paper and he was sure he had found money but when

he cut the bundle open, he found a perfectly mummified

four month old baby, a little younger than one of his own children.

So after eighty years here was a stranger’s grief

over a child that was 50 years his senior.

And here think of loss. Think of the mother in the twenties

who wrapped her child in newspaper and her husband

who plastered that child into the wall.

I’m thinking of ritual: of naming the world in sugar and salt;

of hearing the blood thunk of a collapsing bridge; of tapping out a tune

on Lacy Maddens piano; of seeing Harry Jerome cross the finish line

so fast that he turned to bronze; of remembering a child

who died so young no one knows her grave.