Elegy for a campaign

 In the wake of one of the most exciting campaigns in modern memory, and while Canada contends with round two of Trudeau-mania, we thought it a good time to ask the Governor General's Award-winning poet Lorna Crozier -- a long-time a friend of this show -- if she would be our election poet laureate. She agreed, and penned this piece for us. 

Election: Rainforest, Vancouver Island

The trees, in their tall thinking,

no need of stairs to reach the stars,

no need of signs or pages

because their holy books ring deep inside 

the heartwood; the trees in their tall thinking

are not thinking of you. The wind, too, 

refuses to give you a fixed address, 

to show its photograph ID, the wind refuses 

to choose with an X a future it can't blow through.

Meanwhile the moss softens and dismantles, builds 

towers of spores you must kneel to see.

Such ego-free ambition! Beyond the forest

the ocean peregrines the shore, polls its populations,

and - it's in trouble - sends out daily seagulls with an SOS

you can't ignore. Finally for the moon

the ocean casts its vote and when the count is done,

a full moon rises, spilling across the water

its bloodless legacy of light.

-- Lorna Crozier, October, 2015