Graham, Laurie D.

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The Goose
Volume 17 | No. 2 Article 6
6-10-2019
Conservation
Laurie D. Graham
Part of the Poetry Commons
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Recommended Citation / Citation recommandée
Graham, Laurie D.. "Conservation." The Goose, vol. 17 , no. 2 , article 6, 2019,
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol17/iss2/6.
Conservation 
 
The wish that the extinct return,  
that the nearly gone be plucked from death  
and managed, risks, in my mouth,  
becoming a man with a chainsaw  
on a plot the bank says he can do with what he wants 
 
It’s a hold around the neck of the land 
that says I am and will be  
and not the leaf on the branch 
or the sap of the being 
 
The idea of return is folly  
without first understanding leaving,  
societies built on the hastening of it, 
every inch of territory claimed, 
pruned to grow the desired, every life  
movable, extinguishable, economic 
 
And we visitors, we guests, we small, individual specks 
of death want the larger machines to pour their tailings, we want them  
uprooting all life with their governmental limbs, 
we want a fast commute morning and evening, 
the terms of life rejigged for us and away from Earth  
as government, balance as ethic, away from  
the hard lessons of one’s place within the whole 
 
(the fumble, the novelty 
when the wild comes into town  
and observes you as food) 
 
It’s probably too late to keep 
our trash out of landfill and ocean, to say no  
to plastic straws and pipeline expansions, 
maintaining a slender innocence, little puffs of warm relief 
rising into the atmosphere as we turn away as largely  
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Graham: Conservation
Published by / Publié par Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2019
as the large machines turn toward 
so we get on the highway another day 
 
The tree at the foot of your parcel  
is bleeding on your truck in yoyo spring 
and you don’t know why 
 
The wasps are organizing in your eaves again 
and you can’t say what kind they are 
 
The girl is on the corner with her hat out every morning,  
the cars like a wide carpet around her,  
and you haven’t learned her name or where she’s from 
 
And the songs of and for this place  
remain locked in far-away museums 
 
What do you know out your window? 
What can you tell us 
of the managed, shorn, tuneless expanses  
that surely await us all? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
LAURIE D. GRAHAM grew up in Treaty 6 territory (Sherwood Park, Alberta), and she currently 
lives in Treaty 20 territory (Peterborough, Ontario), where she is a poet, an editor, and the 
publisher of Brick magazine. She has two books of poetry, Rove and Settler Education, and she 
recently published a collaborative chapbook with artist Amanda Rhodenizer called The Larger 
Forgetting. 
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The Goose, Vol. 17, No. 2 [2019], Art. 6
https://scholars.wlu.ca/thegoose/vol17/iss2/6


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