my cynical poem about the Olympic torch coming through Prince George last Friday : )

Canada is a coke bottle

Canada is a coke bottle,
running down this snowy road with the flame
to the next person waiting in white;
in Vancouver where bulldozers push the snow from
higher mountains wrapped in cloud,
brought down to the level of rain puddles,
meteorologist city-watching from an office window,
the Suzuki foundation warns of
global warming on the slopes of Cypress:
Canada is a coke bottle.

My young son waves the coke flags,
Canada, Coca-Cola,
concentrated in a bottle,
through the inky blackness:

what is it exactly?

Forgotten watersheds, schools,
cancer patients,
the pulp mill shut down for the afternoon
so as not to smell in the national media
when the torch came through,
brightening Ospika temporarily,
the drab street where I run
and nothing ever seems to happen,
but for tarring the potholes;

they are all here this afternoon,
the crowds,
what matters now,
jarring music that drowns everything out,

searching desperately for my friends
to hand out "No Tanker" decals
to paint the loony-loons black
with a slick of oil

the lick of black,
oozes now from us:

Canada is a coke bottle.