Vancouver: at the edge
Vancouver pulls us to it,
for contrasts rule here,
the enlightening definition of the edge
where both sides reveal themselves powerfully,
right where they diverge,
what “is” clearer when next to what “isn’t,”
a great city at the edge of a great continent,
hard up against the greatest of the oceans,
land pulling itself into mountains,
next to sea diving deeply and rising into harbor,
the fish and shellfish exuberant,
the forests old and exuberant,
sea birds, as if they are needles
pulling threads of connection behind them,
hunt and feed and dance with the air,
calling raucously of their own stories,
while land birds join the work of the weaving,
whales have pulled at us to come here,
where they prosper in the darker worlds below the surface
and come up to exhale in plumes and breathe,
sometimes they breach into the air for what looks like joy,
a whale-watching boat lives at that edge, as do all boats,
for a few hours we roam the ocean and luckily spot
over 20 humpback whales visiting the edge,
where our hearts reach out to them
and touch their world with brief snaps of the camera
and empathic guesses of the heart,
the stories of indigenous peoples have pulled at us,
for decades, particularly those along this coast,
we visit a museum in British Columbia
that works hard to tell their story
with artifacts, small and intricate, and large and imposing,
and with the First People’s own words
as they live their own take on it all,
they thrive in contrast with other stories
that sought to deny theirs,
it’s so easy to lose either,
if we can’t hold both at the same time,
I search for commonality
while I discover the differences
that can reveal both sides more truly,
indigenous and colonizer, the wild and the tamed,
the fauna and the flora,
the geological and the seasonal,
what lessons can we learn from the Earth and from the Sky?
for we are of that which lives where opposites meet,
and the more we can hold both, the better for us, and for all.
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