Turner Valley Oil Field


They trotted out his anticline,

capstone crust punctured

by a wedge-thrust to the town's

makeover bonanza, where

seismic pricks could plot

secured flab, and flatter him

under talk-show sunlight.

Yet look at the after shot:

Devonian shell-sweat is

girdled by a deer-head buckle,

his footwall has lead foot

in a King Cab, and during

apotheosis to carbon cloud

his Nudie suit will blacken

at dusk, sloughing sequins

over our sweet, crude sleep.


Elk Crossing


Trapped in river's cage.
Tantrum of endless present.

Foam nooses my neck,

bone boughs seeking rim.


My eyes urge herd to heave

off winter locks, burrowing

in liquid cell's hunger.

Don't yield to fetters:


you'll tread lives of reflection

ending with boulder mirrors.

Prison edge, my lunges pry

open a gap in last gasps.


Hinge-leap fores and backs

into montane's gusty probation

and a grey jay's applause.

Styled under snow's welter,


pine stumps, blade whiskers

are charmed in brush rubble;

these guards aloof to hooves

shaking off annual sentences.


Kootenay Group


This outcrop chops logic:

a blender of interbedded

shale and silt smuggled in

glacial meal is exhumed

by clastic talking cures.

Hairpinning rube-seams

fist bump mudstone squatters

chugging oh-two brews,

while boho aspens snort

coal to cook up a scree

of showboating fancy-Dans.

En route to a cirque's scoop,

a lamp house stockpiles slag.

Moss plots cement's nap,

reclaiming dimpled vugs:

sphagnum beards hum here.