9.9.11

The first poem I read in the tenth grade textbook

Road Between Saskatoon and Edmonton

Yes - there are hills on the prairie,
trees, even; the roads sometimes winds.
It is not
home on the range
with perpetually sunny skies,
for up there in that sky
wider and higher than the one I grew up with
clouds shift and reshift,
drop sudden showers,
vanish again in sunlight.

I name over the foreign words and objects:
those almost lakes are sloughs;
that is a windbreak of poplars,
geometrically planted before the square farmhouse.
The chief difference in the land
is that there is more of it.

The little towns are prairie cliches,
each with its grain elevator
onion-domed church
and Chinese restaurant.

But there are hints of Celtic landscape
near Kitscoty and Innisfree
lake water set in valleys
Irish and wet,
with new green grass,
and I can even imagine
the nine bean-rows
and a homesick immigrant
almost finding himself at home.

Will I ever be at home in this country?
Will I ever be at home again away from it?

- Elizabeth Brewster

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