My City

(On the inauguration of the position of Poet Laureate for the City of Greater Sudbury)

In this city, we mine more than nickel.
Ore-veins of stories are surveyed
and tagged in our forests. In the great smelter
of song, voices find their true
shine: the harmonies of silver, platinum,
copper and nickel, and, sometimes, a nervous
hiccup. In the deep bolt-holes
and drifts of our hearts, we pick and shovel
words into poems. At the end of a shift,
legends come up the main shaft
in sweat-stained undershirts, and tell,
word for word, of labyrinths in their underground.

The silence we need between words comes
on each high-flying arrow of Canada-geese.
Lakes they pass over wake up
as only lakes can, so the noiseless beat
of their wings turns into answering ripples.
Then they hoot suddenly, like migrating musicians
or feathered trombones. At night, the silence
is broken by loons in kazoo ensembles.

In our city, sleek alley-yarns tell
of the ipods and secret messaging that goes on
between cats. During winter, the sled-dog
crackles on his megaphone, while the trapper binds us
in our places with the fine-threaded martyrology
of his captivating tongue. Within our over three hundred
lakes, white-fish swim in counterpoint,
like thoughts for a clean and drinkable opera.

In Sudbury’s school-yards, there’s a commotion
like the distant echo of the meteor that struck here
and shaped us, millions of years ago. True
to their intergalactic origin, the children heave
and reorganize everything. What they say is far-flung
and new. Parents construct dictionaries
to understand them. Grandparents just smile and know.

After blasting in the mines, there’s a heavy rock-fall
of language. Words chip against words,
then rest together more smoothly.
The devil lies in the unnoticed details.
A honey-bee can struggle in a spider’s web; and a noun
rhyme richly, but not fit the line.
Though the sun does wrestle with frogs on our boulders,
it’s the sun that sometimes hops away.

After rain, words smell of sage
and wild garlic. The breeze resonates
like the thrum of re-greening guitars. Birds
have sacred conversations about the wholly secular.
And a boot of each child across the city gets lost
in the mud. But words, unlike boots, always look
for each other, and need the chance. This city
gives us our language. We live where we can speak.

© Roger Nash