How can This be Real?
Est-ce que c'est Riel?

We'd tripped on that plot of Louis Riel,
eyeful of years re- & rediscovered,
slap at our manic devotion
to a hasty hanging blurred
by railways down through years
of métis seizures, tangible tears
splayed on bayonets, a corps disturbed
by the RCMP, shirts russetting on white sleeves
flapping in wheatless silences
between the odds of devotion
to the last stand, savage commotion
in a blizzard's swell
of buried blades.   Are we too slow to quell
forces force their way!   Et qui saurait pourquoi?

(c) 1999 & 2001 by Richard Vallance

from June, 2000 issue