And the Painter Laid Bare the Land
– a poem for Jim Davies
Here, in the Badlands, the weather gnaws,
a recalcitrant river valley:
all elbows and knuckles and vertebrae,
no sloping shoulders, undulating ribs,
or rounded thighs.
Where twice as bright light bakes the clay kiln hot,
cracking and crumbling
until the wind shrieks
chisels of rain and sand leave tortured hoodoos
solitary amid the wrinkled sandstone.
And their flesh,
washes down the gullet of the Red Deer
to empty into the belly
of the South Saskatchewan.
The Badlands lie like the crumbled mould
used to form the Rockies.
Eon upon eon, fallen in upon one another,
a caved-in cellar.
So many histories that they're all stacked,
layer upon layer,
waiting their turn to re-emerge.
Here, the spirit of the land
lurks beneath the surface
clutching secrets
coveting memories.
In the Badlands at night, the darkness stares back.