The Red River has flooded over the centuries.  My mom was around for the 1950 flood, and I was in Winnipeg in 1997 and 2011 (we were in Australia in 2009 so I missed that one).  Epic and monumental are words that spring to mind.

It's amazing to observe, and in 2011, I was inspired to document an item I heard on the radio. The show was about flooding and the Red River Floodway which was completed in 1968 and expanded in the 2000s. The Floodway was dismissed by opponents of then Premier Duff Roblin, who proposed it, labelling it as "Duff's Ditch".  Little did they know ...

 

The river is high again 

rushing north.  Rained hard at night and then for a few days.

 

A geographical anomaly

Remnant of the last ice age

 

Fossils are part of the local architecture.

 

The ancient lake wants to reach equilibrium

and I heard an old man talk about his achievements

which are visible every time the rivers rise. 

He was modest;

"priggish", said an announcer from the 1960s.

But our social structure has a lot to do with what he brought into being

including the big gates that divert the mighty Red from terrorizing the city that was built at the confluence of two prairie rivers.  They are the bottom of the ancient lake bed and all water will run through those channels.  The ancient clay bottom doesn't soak up much.  

The water moves along.

 

Our wheelbarrow was full of water in the morning.

I rode my bike over the rushing Red, several times today. Suspended on a bridge spanning the flood. 

Spring 2011

 

 

 

Thoughts, poems, musings in the early days after university ...

Cropduster drone against a half-moon summer sky.

Sleeping graves lie

in even prairie rows

to fend off

tunnelling gophers

and yellow-edged night. 

 

July, 1984

 

 

A visit to Ontario (home), Aug. 1984 (I needed to escape the confines of my small town existence and had a chance to get out for a holiday.)

Kev, smiling as if his life depended on it.  Warm rain pelting down against us -- "Have you ever driven 40 miles an hour into the rain?"   No hello.  I didn't want it.  Hair plastered against tanned forehead, forearms and shoulders hunched over the ancient steering wheel -- "I've got to get these peaches into the barn." It was good to see him again.  I could have stood in the rain for an hour, soaking in that smile.

 

 Satellite going East

 

Trailing its flight into the deep-dusk purple night.

Sky oscillating like so many shivers.

Venus flips by, surprised.

I blink too, as the Dipper is skimmed.

Revolve me away from my hands,

littering this asphalt with peanut shells.

 

Sept. 29, 84 - written in Winkler where I lived for my job

 

The copper-hued and blue toned towns

are etched

against a disappearing prairie -- 

infinity of its darkness broken only by the gridded network.

 

(flying to Vancouver from Winnipeg, Oct. 84)

The geese are going against a

layered, shuffling

high grey cloud.

 

Calling the warmed-over days away with them. 

 

Oct. 9/84

 

Thoughts/ideas I jotted down in my life in the small town:

 

• When younger, it was always a special thrill to hear a Mennonite name in advertising, over the news.  Something alien, yet somewhere in there an identifiable characteristic.
• Interaction between people forced into a community -- e.g., senior apartments.  I heard of an  older woman accused of being a prostitute.
• Load of potatoes in a pick-up out the front window!
• She loved her cousin enough to marry him -- he was alike, yet he was different. 

 

 

 

Assiniboine River:  Bare-bones ghost of a wind, ruffling water.  Disturbing the silver moon's path, illuminating a track from water to leaves on trees.

Spring, 1982  

Rain on a July morning.  Swaying poplar trees, richly scented, heavy with memories of other humid spring evenings.   Weighs on my olfactory senses like a memory, awakens remembrances of other days.  Honeysuckle-perfumed morning air mingled with crisp, green cut grass.  The smells blanket all sights and sounds momentarily.

 

 

 

Apollo's Gate

 

Driving west under Orion's belt

 I want to see you again.

 I want to sway with the accelerating train

 and stand in a cocoon of almost dark

 and silence.

 

The hillside towns will flash their lights as we recall the day:

 Echoing with lost glories,

 filled with the red-ochred walls,

 and Apollo --

 still guarding his temple gate.

 

I travel through the dark-skied dim corridor

 and the headlights swathe my memories

 and leave them at Apollo's cast-bronze feet.

 

Feb. 29, 1984 (remembering a visit to Pompeii)

 

 

 

 

Dreams to Remember By

 

I sleep in strangers' beds and let the waves of my imagining

 carry me from darkening hills

 to light-washed towns below.

 Then hold me to a tide-soaked shore

 (although my footprints fade at water's edge) 

 and capture me in the cold white light of northern winter moon.

 

Sleeting air cools and snow soon lies air-brushed

along the blades and twigs that mark the path.   

Jan. 1984

 

 

 

 

Seduité

I taste your tongue on mine and am at once unsure.

How I came to be here, I know:  

    This is a celebration, 

    attendant requirements have been met.

 

Balloons,

    streamers,

          drinks in hand.

 

And smiling eyes, music from just around the corner --

    An occasion that merits attention.

 

Instead,

your cunning tongue leaves this fluorescence 

ebbing along the boundaries of my sight,

my vision trapped by these outlines of skin. 

Feb. 1984

 

 

 

"The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt." (Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose)

 

Jazz on the Rooftop

 

Five days of rain in a prairie summer.  I blink like vampire,

trapped by the sun that appears.

 

It bleeds through the window cracks,

shadows potted palms against glazed granite walls.

 

Paper floats to the ground behind the guitarist.

That distracts me from the geometric jazz that snakes into my mind.

Rhythmic fingers and feet moved around me:  They didn't see the paper. 

Aug. 15/85

 

 

 

 

 "have to kick at the darkness 'till it bleeds daylight ..."

Bruce Cockburn  (Folk Festival)

 

The Baby Minder

    The approaching death of a young man has touched on my thoughts, especially for the effect the idea of "death" has had on his support workers.  Both have been haggard about it.  Both have been, and looked, and sounded, hurt.  Death in its most unfair sense -- a handicapped young man, low resource background, both in terms of family and finances.  Eighteen years old.

     He died last night.  A hard time for the support worker who was curled upon the couch when I left the house this morning.  Was it better for the young man who died?  A few weeks of terrifying pain, not months.  And it could have dragged on much longer.  Today the northern wind is cold and hard, with a large, haze-encircled white winter moon.  Goodbye to a life.

     I knew it would happen soon.  I knew it because they put a baby minder in his and the support workers' room so he wouldn't have to shout for him, or cry for long.  A creative use of an item designed for the beginning of life, not its end.

Jan 14, 1987 - too many men died of AIDS