Cowtown Elegy

This land is your land,
This land is my land,
From Bonavista to Vancouver Island,
From the Arctic Circle,
To the Great Lake waters,
This land was made for you and me…*

We’ve landed. Immigrants from the East.

The land is something we take over

In a second-hand station wagon we dubbed The Green Bomb

we glide into golden terrain

Wheat. Oats. Barley. Rape seed.

A marriage of a limitless blue sky and a flaxen sea

We discard our laksa and belachan into straw-burnt fields

ploughed among waves blonde with promise and profit

Speak only English! was my mother’s command.

So we don their ways, perform their polite grins

eat Wonder Bread sandwiches

mark Canada Day with a KFC bucket and neon green coleslaw

During the Stampede rodeo week, the cowboy gear wears us.

I’m contained by a pink cowboy hat, rigid and absurd

my look cemented by stiff western boots seeding blisters

funny, no one dresses ‘indian’

At the parade, amber moccasins pound the pavement.

Cree Piegan Ojibwa Sarcee Blackfoot Blood

drunk office workers clad as cowboys whoop it up, awakening to

toasty pancake rounds punctuated by red sizzling bacon

Mum comes home from her 9-to-5 reeking of beer and party sweat.

she flips on the radio and gyrates to the Doors,

Hallo I love you won’t you tell me your name?

at the time, I hear ‘dream’ not ‘name’

Barrel racing. Calf Roping. Bull Riding. Chuckwagon Races.

sometimes, horses had accidents and had to be put down

The show continues. Children shriek on the rollercoaster.

we are consoled by a massive firework display raining golden

A giant Pow Wow roars with dignitaries paying heed.

dancers stomp to thumping beats on buffalo hide

the esteemed guests, bestowed white hats, yell

Yahoo! presumptuous of their own goodwill

Drums and blood-curdling chanting slices raw bone.

interred by dirt fertile with toil and blood

producing harvest upon harvest

deep in the fundament, a life force smolders

Makasins walk softly upon the earth.

in search of dispersed sacred relics

Children are violently reaped from families

returning by unnatural and brutal means into the ground

We paid the price to work and play.

our souls subsumed by tainted soil

as the dead and their dreams join the darkness

This land was not made for you and me.

*Canadian version of the 1940 Woody Guthrie song, This Land is Your Land