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What We Did On Canada Day by John Terpstra

By League of Canadian Poets | June 27, 2022

Poem title: What We Did On Canada Day Poet name: John Terpstra Poem: this year, in observance of the one hundred and fifty-fourth birthday of our home and I can’t speak aloud the next word of the song, is bike to Central Park in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, a site deeply contaminated by industry, where these our settler-sins, the ones against the earth itself, are being buried ever more deeply out of sight out of mind under truckloads of landfill, to stand with a few neighbours, as a friend played The Flowers of the Forest, a lament, on his bagpipes, and we remembered the children. End of poem. Credits and Bio: Copyright © John Terpstra John Terpstra has published ten books of poetry and five creative non-fiction. One of his poems, Giants, is mounted on a plaque on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment overlooking downtown Hamilton, where he lives and works as a cabinetmaker. Recent publications include Call Me Home (poetry, Gaspereau Press; 2021); Daylighting Chedoke (non-fiction, Wolsak and Wynn; 2018).

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