THUNDER BAY – Entertainment – There are times, living in Thunder Bay that many of us forget just how special this area really is.
Here is a reminder…
Awash in the Harbour – A Poem by Ronn Hartviksen
YOU are our Harbour
With a Giant in slumber.
YOU are summer breezes
Before Thunder.
YOU are winter where
Landscapes quake in the deep freeze.
YOU are First Nations
Ojibwa and Cree.
Bark dwellings called tee pees.
YOU are brothers and sisters
Legends in rock paintings.
YOU are mothers and grandmothers
Calling their children.
YOU are colours of Rainbows. Northern Lights. the Milky Way.
Our boreal planet by sun, moon and stars.
YOU are pre-Cambrian
Advancing the Devonian.
YOU are birds nesting in trees.
Tiny creatures a Creator’s delight:
Butterflies, bees, fireflies by campfires.
YOU are mighty. Manitou and Moose.
Otter paddling with muskrat and beaver.
Wild wanderings of a Canada goose.
YOU are plaintive cry of a loon.
Blue herons in a sun-baked sky at noon.
YOU brought Hope to a shoreline.
On swarthy highways called the Great Lakes
Glacially carved through seven historic Ice Ages;
Though nary a whale, in our midst, that breaches freshwater.
YOU became enticement for wanderers.
Sails of England. Voyageurs.
Scots. Norse. Dutch. Ukrainians all.
Besides Spanish, Italian, Croatians and Serbs.
Poles. Germans. Danes and Finns.
Later: Africa and Asia, the Americas too.
Paving their way
Where prosperity mellowed comrades with grins.
YOU are exports mulled on plains and the forest.
The import of savvy in an Industrial Age.
When trades became plotted with tackle and trim.
First a township, then a city. You unveiled a whim.
YOU evolved from an original Stockade’s Identity.
In Time YOU lifted the light of Dawn
Riveting rays on Terry Fox the Legend.
Yet much more than a Hero. A true Marathon Man.
Bravely stepped across half of a continent
On only one leg saying, ”I can.”
We’re Sailing now. Flourishing into our future.
A Nation’s On Guard For Thee. A timeless Infinity.
Where, in a country setting, my writer’s pen
Is sublimely charged by a nocturnal window.
Aiming to bail out sunken verses to handle
Where a calico cat purrs on her side of the candle.