Peace River baptism,
that slow,
winding,
brown water mother
gives life,
protects and defines
this high place.
Sometimes it seems
we look down on the mountains.
Then others,
seem like a mountains heart.
The windswept cold
of these high, sub-arctic plains
mimic the world.
Hot as Texas in summer,
cold as Siberia in winter.
Autumn comes
with the colors of new England,
and Spring makes
all her waters brown.
Here,
at the bottom of some ancient ocean,
the rich soil
yields black dirt crops
to feed us.
Green fields,
lay a patchwork across the land
during the brief growing season.
So close to those forested foothills
and mountain peaks
that the lumber trucks
rumble on the roads.
The oil and gas guys
work out in the fields,
wrangling energy
for an adolescent race.
Peace Country.
Still trying to make sense
of its past.
Abundant,
and despondent at a glance,
as those who were here before
struggle with a system
that has no use
for native things
it cannot use for power.
Out here,
on what’s left of the frontier,
maybe we’re
far enough away
from those old power brokers
to make it right,
right here?
Peace River knows.
That old mother
has protected this land
since long before there were people here.
She knows,
the sad past,
the restless present
and the future.
Under the endless sky,
that seems to touch
both edges of our planet,
wide as we can see.
And at night,
all the stars of Heaven
shine like a map
of endless possibilities.
Maybe we find a way
to live here,
like the elk,
and the moose,
and the bear.
Peace Country.
Peace River.
Old mother knows
what wisdom flows
in this land.
Maybe we’ll learn,
if we’re quiet
and we listen
to the wind speak,
and the Aurora dance
in the big sky
above Peace Country.
HG – 2022
