Idea

Two eyes of steel spark as they catch imaginations luminous light,
From the depths of a thought-chiselled face, ideas bloom and take flight,
Rough, strong hands gesticulate faster, spinning pulsing spheres of thought,
Eyes dancing, fingers flailing, spoken words singing, a seamless, flowing,
thinking machine.

Civilization

125 years ago where my house now stands...
On the floodplains of the Elbow,
The T'Suu Tina camped for summer - untold days before,
They had run a herd of buffalo off the cliffs nearby,
And now the rivers ran red with blood
As the women, laughing in their labour
While naked children splashed about around them,
Cracked bones for marrow on the rocks at the rivers edge,
Underneath the cottonwoods that sighed as the South wind lazily stretched
their limbs far overhead.

125 years later where my house now stands...
On the floodplains of the dammed Elbow,
A Sarcee man lay - untold days before,
I had seen him, wobbling to beg
Outside the Alberta Government Liquor store,
Lips clasping a bottle in a paper bag which sucked
The life from him with every sip and won
Its just reward. Bottle cracked, beside the broken man,
The police came to cart him away at a neighbours behest,
Finding him dead, wondering,
Why he couldn't be rolled over,
Finally, chipping him with pick and hammer off the ground,
To which his last urine had frozen him.

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