Runoff
by John Barton
What we release into the river.
How we alter the current.
The irrigation dam on the Old Man flooding the sacred
lands of the Peigan who have lived
here for generations on the arid Alberta plains.
The salmon-ladders.
The transmigration upward
slowing on the other side of the mountains, fewer
fish ascending waterfalls now absent.
Hydroelectric
dams everywhere in the middle
of nowhere: an invisible
sustain
able environment that sells—bill
boards defaced at the gates of Banff National Park
Don’t embitter
Don’t starve the bears
The town site above Bow Falls
exempt from Parks Canada policy so it can
accommodate more: tourists unaware of
the missing wild
currant bushes we trans
planted from roadside
ditches along any highway that climbs into the eastern
slopes of the Rockies, the civilized
currants boiled
in treated Elbow River
water, sugared and cooled
cellophane sealing in their tamed
alpine savagery
which, like lovers, we grow
to forget the moment we taste it—
this confusion
of currants and river water
tartness
and intent, words
picked from the disturbed bushes and erased
of meaining in the ‘natural’
flow of discourse, it’s good for you
embossed on the empty
jars, sterilized or thrown away, which clutter
basements hungering for some purgative Boy Scout bottle drive or else
they are
dislodged from the landfill site during runoff
in the spring, residual tang mixing
with dioxins
in the water table
in the lakes and streams.
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