Portage La Prairie

Portage La Prairie

no A-frames although some of those eaves

come close to grounding –

they’re the warmer places, as it seems

to you in the freezing bus

they’re the Lorne – is it Lorne? – Avenue elite –

cedars, pines, cedars, pines, cedars

line the pretty, unpeopled streets

where the numbers are always higher

than they ought to be, as if

like my mother did whenever she washed

my hair in those shallow baths, they begin

at a thousand – a thousand tiny chimneys

hardly hint at the winter maelstrom

which hits the prairies – minus forty-five

not uncommon, nor death from cars

gone haywire, their bald snow tyres

adrift on icy asphalt in the blizzards

that sweep away all green as if forever –

driveways to the backyard all there is

to demarcate one property from the next –

no fence lines, no hedges, no privacy –

cheap blinds always uplifted on the houses

with a corner hanging twisted and askew

like a partially paralysed mouth –

downpipes all duct taped –

roads often spot-repaired, never re-laid –

power poles so crudely hewn, they seem

nothing but trees stripped of bark, branches and roots –

car tyres all dusty –

scarce citizens all smiling in a way

that grates harshly on wretches noticing

nothing but degrees of grey –

and though still seventy kilometres away

the level terrain makes Winnipeg look closer –

the Canada Pacific station has, at second glance

been defiled by a little spray paint –

the headstone store so dramatically overfull

it seems not to have sold much in while.