I was asked to perform a poem as part of T8N Celebrates. The below poem is inspired by a coworker’s run-in with a moose.
A moose!
She exclaimed, arms stretched
above her head, displaying
the enormity of the animal
By the river!
And only me to see it!
Her audience oohed and ahhhed,
some rolled their eyes because
a moose? Here? No.
Not in a city of cars
and concrete, bricks
and buildings stuffed with people
busy peopling all over the place.
A moose? Here? Impossible.
Moose-t certainly not.
As if impossibilities aren’t occurring
every single day:
Bumblebees fly by vortex,
scientists recorded the sound of a black hole,
monarchs migrate 3000 miles annually,
and, sometimes, a teeny, tiny
virus infects the entire world
within months;
closes the city of cars
and concrete, bricks and buildings,
forces people to do
their peopling in place.
Improbable, by all accounts.
A science fiction story,
and not the fun kind
with hoverboards
and robot dogs.
But this is a community
thread through with
arteries of green ravines,
where parks beat like
botanical hearts.
A city that knows, just like
Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park,
that “life finds a way”
We understand how a small,
frozen sample of hope
transforms into something
ferocious and enduring.
Because St. Albert is a community
where little miracles happen daily,
where a women
stumbles upon a moose
on her evening walk
down the Sturgeon River.