Saturday, September 27, 2014

Poem by Peggy Lauzon

Ribbons: September 20, 2014

We spread out along the ribbon of the Trans-Canada Highway. 

We are 8,000 kilometers wide, but only a pencil line high. 

Our map is not to scale.

The highway narrows from four-lane to two-lane to gravel to trackless bush.

And one more polluted lake equals one more missing or murdered Indigenous woman.  There is simply no way to separate ourselves from the land. 

Families drag the Red River at their own expense.  Drag our collective unconscious as we struggle not to look at what surfaces.

We cut the ribbon at the Museum for Human Rights.  Lest we forget atrocities that happened in other times; in other places. 

The Red River is a different kind of ribbon.

We narrow from four-lane highway to trackless bush.  Or is it the other way round?

We are not to scale.  We could stand taller.  We will, when we truly see what surfaces.

We drag the Red River.

And there’s no knowing what will come next.


Peggy Lauzon

Written for the day of the opening of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights


No comments:

Post a Comment