30

because our coast is our future

a space we share with the many

now working loving and playing

and the many who will come after

working and loving and playing

because this is where we walked

this is where we swam

and the pictures taken here

beneath the riverbed

are lines to our anchor souls

because the ecos in our economies

is the same ecos as in our ecologies

and our not dwelling on this fact

lays waste to all homes of all things

that may be dwelling here

because this is where we walked

this is where we swam

and the pictures taken here

beneath the river bed

run right through our lotic souls

because our coast is our future

a space we will share with the many

now working loving and playing

and the many who will come after

working and loving and playing

Capital—we are coming

and we will defend our coast

link arms and defend our coast

sing this song to defend our coast

walk forward to defend our coast

29

Defenders—Tsleil-Waututh and

Squamish—Yinka Dene and

Wet’suwet’en—Sto:lo and

Gitxzan and Lubicon Cree

and so many more in this

unbroken line—and day and

night labourers nurses teachers

fishermen and foresters—bakers

baristas clerks and caterers—

grandmothers uncles nieces

and friends and acquaintances

who love and console us and

children gamers activists and

students and immigrants of all kinds—

Rise up—we are the people

come upon each other in

streets and on paths through

woods—in parks and alleyways

along piers on rocks overlooking

the sea and amongst the mottled

sides of rivers and streams and

in suburban back yards or the

middle of farms of modest size—

finding we compose a world

outside states corporate profits

or trade agreements and we rise

up together and we rise up

to defend our coast together

28

Defenders—rise up

lift this feeling

for Cormorant and Gull

Sandpiper and Dipper

Petrel Shearwater Grebe

and Bittern and Egret

Great Blue Heron

Kestrel and Killdeer

lift this feeling

for Wood Duck and

American Wigeon the

Scaup Elder Harlequin

and Hooded Merganser

Stellar’s Jay and Hutton’s

Vireo lift this feeling

for Spruce and

Sage Grouse Rock

Ptarmigan and Yellow

Warbler for the living

web lift Bald Eagle Raven

Barn Owl—rise up

Flicker Harrier Towhee

and Thrush—lift this

feeling for the freshets

for the forms loving flight

27

Defenders we travel inland

along rivers and in and out

of streams knowing lotic

systems and unidirectional

flow—riffles glides and pools

the angle at which light strikes

leading to light lost to reflection

Knowing biofilm and water column

algae—moss and liverwort

knowing duckweed and water

hyacinth invasive hydrilla and

cattail tops emerging from

slow water and bladderwort

feeding on small captured organism

Knowing sinuosity and substrate

crayfish with their feather-like gills

salamander and trout and

oolichan and the riparian zone

with otter and beaver and mink and

wolf and bear midst salmon spawning

then alevin then parr then smolt 

Knowing especially the salmon and

bear and cedar and salmon cycling

nitrogen back from seas knowing

magnetoception and the names of

rivers salmon return to and this

circle is love and nowhere does it

include oil spilling from burst pipes

26

Defenders—consider

Bull Kelp and Splitleaf Rockweed

consider Common Coralline Seaweed

and Staghorn Bryozoan consider

Sea Pan and Encrusting Bryozoan

consider Red Jelly Fish

and Crimson Anemone consider

Aggregating and Plumrose Anemone

consider White-plumed Buried

and Swimming Anemone consider

Fish-eating and Tube Anemone and

consider Tube Worms the Giant

Nudibank and Hudson’s Doris

and Yellowmargined Cadlina

See the waters ebbing and flooding

clear for centuries to come see

the play of light on and beneath

waves and the shape of shadow

and light on rock and sand beneath

surface—see Pacific Giant Octopus

and Swimming Scallop see Wrinkled

Dove Shell and Leafy Hommouth

Frilled Dog-winkle and Blue Top

Snail—Northern Abalone and

Speckled Limpet—Red-flecked

Chiton and Giant Sunflower Star—

see all of this and nowhere the stain

of bitumen in the endless days to come

25

because we have damaged it so badly

because of accumulation

because of plastic

because of our cars and motorcycles and trucks

            and RVs and speed boats and

because  of mining metals and smart phones

because we see it but keep doing it

because we find it too easy

because of the sleep called entertainment

because of airplanes and the beauty of the world

            and hotels and beaches in pictures

because of the distance between home and work

because of fruit in winter and a lack of canning

because of highways and innovations in paving

because we are longing

because of the creation of scarcity and want

because of the movie

because of the song

because we weren’t told to think we were told

            to go shopping

because our leaders get paid

because there are those who can pay for

anything and everything and they will

because of the media they own

because of our leaders they own

because of us

because we can change but don’t or haven’t

because of the frog and the pot

24

Folks they were always

here before erasures

no one should have to

face came ashore and

what is a pipeline? What

is an inlet where oil

fills fishing grounds

and rivers wash down

globs of bitumen to spawn

in synthetic seas

but the continuation

of centuries of colonization?

Defenders—elders—others

gathered from all around

see this parliament’s a shell

washed up on a beach with

nothing in it not even sound—

see this oil company it’s

only money burning money

to make money for no ends—

and see this massive crowd

forming—it’s called the people

and the people are coming to

decolonize and to defend

23

Time—do not be

a devourer—

we will set aside

our lucent skins

take off hair and

lung—carpal and

sinew—set aside

heart and—skeletal—

dance along the sides

of the tar sands

along the length

of the pipelines

and in the hollow holds

of the tankers waiting

to be filled

Mother—is there another

dance we might perform?

Working in a circle

healing ourselves our

relationships and our world—

space is what we’ve

laid waste to

inside and out

accumulating the capital of

the crazed glaze of commodity

now—working in a circle

replace cell phone with bird call

jet ski with water fall

refinery with otter dive

pesticide with bee hive

22

If we are like I am

which is temporary

which is often confused

which is folded

which is an array

which is hoping

which is under weathers

which is branching

which is self-inflicting

which is beholden

which is overflowing

which is a sad consumer

And if I am like we are

which is pointillist

which is echolocating

which is non-unionized but organizing

which is near spent fuel rods

which watches ducks and orcas

which puts the pedal to the metal

which is complex and contradictory

which is non-violent but gets angry

which sports various gadgetry

which is bullshit as we all know

which is our only hope

Then open every door and window

storm streets and seats of bad government

and lead by following in the defence

of the laws of mother earth

21

Defenders—I hear an elder

do you hear her too? These damages

to our mother are plain

though hidden under happy plunder

by imaginary people

drinking oil and eating money

Lost species are

lost forever—they are stories

no one knows anymore

islands lost to rising seas

are one thing—money made out of

the dead ends of days is another

We now confront

terminal crises of a model

based on submission and destruction—

have you seen the cops?

They are oily engine parts too

no mechanism without its kill-switch, eh?

I would walk one thousand miles

to get out of oil—the other option

is we’re all fossils to fuel no fires—

so our decisions are made “under the influence”

as the saying goes—but there are other

influences too—elder mother home—listen

20

because economies can no longer trump

ecologies for they are the front and back

doors of the same precarious house

because we are always at beginnings

when at our ends and have to be thoughtful

of what comes after our getting there too

because the birds smoking cigarettes on

the wires outside our windows also need

something like healthcare and revolution

because whatever we carry we can and

must be mindful of the ground we cover

like great hollow forms in our passage

because governments and debts and

the privilege of the few will not stop

and listen to us somewhere on the road

because the slippages are many and

pipes burst and tankers tank and the

seepage is without profit for any animal

because we are animals and other

animals remind us of limits and we aspire

never to leave the shards of glass behind us

because the broken is a property of the

made and markets are vague consequences

without promises the next stop in our sequence

19

Listen to this prospect

this view of sounds

harbours bays and bends

that drift spendthrift through

our consumptive debts

and echoing projects to reclaim

social wealths locked in

private speech by public men

lying about their leisure and

the sound of their own voices

as the big banking thermostat

is set to up the oil flow

for the overheated planet to

what—spin a little faster?

make us all terrified of the earth

that calm and patient growth

of sweet light corruption

bent to our engineered ends

fluvial and Devonian we will

distill exquisite winds of

alternative energies and

lessened desires for divine

materials accepting leavings

from the gleanable commons

spread as this compost about

the ecos we house and hold

18

What chemistry this sea coast

to feed all kinds of terraqueous

forms and resiliencies the

bones of salmon in riverbed

exposed mollusk on storm beach

as we are heightened by sitka

spruce to overlook soup of

mists and spray where nations'

many songs came as compounds

formed out of Pacific ethers

and we will have no green-wash

spread about this cedared realm

because we know the winds

are not yet infectious and the

blackberries flavorous still

And that other chemistry

of social transformation

the thought network that

leads us to the edge of change

and pushes us over—Defenders

let’s take that courageous step

from the well-oiled machinery

we know into the ghostlier

realm of air and sunlight

we don’t but which yet beckons

the bubbling store of tomorrows

we may yet create if we still

harbor visions and if we still

see the orca spyhopping and the

village sprawl at forest fringe

17

Curious the resurrection

of bud burst and stem

in the round of seasons

I cannot help but watch

the sea water rise

and fall the harbor fill

and empty with the passage

of tankers which seem

to murmur the strange

psalms of capital as they

pass beneath the Lion’s Gate

and the lilacs might still

be blooming in the dooryards

of Delta where long trains of

containers snake to other deaths

less dramatic than pipelines

or tankers three times the size

of the Exxon Valdez its

honeysuckle heart the

rusting steel dream of

production’s fraught desire O

defenders of this long paddled

coast—beware this compost

of mind and matter this liberal

western ghost of soft change

soft rioting—behold as the

death we sought to thwart

arrives by other means

at the door of our endlessly

unconscious and unquenchable homes

16

We withdraw from

the still woods we love

the hollow call of ravens

where no fossil fuel

drives their dark wings

through dark cedars

How can this

bitumen dream bring life?

Every continent worked over

for the sour dead

of millennia pressed

into layers of coal and oil

You see we became gluttons

gulping down generations

of possibility as foul liquid—

under this land earth burns

the machinery of thought

grinds and shakes and strains

This is no compost

no death for future birth—

gas pouring out of our shopping

oil spilling from broken commodity—

we throw death after death

and draw dark flowers from our eyes

15

because of Cohasset

because of Wilmar Saskatchewan

because of Rusk County Wisconsin

because of Glenavon Saskatchewan

because of Fort McMurray

because of Neche North Dakota

because of Virden Manitoba

because of Kalamazoo

because of Romeoville Illinois

because of every place the oil spills

we are coming Enbridge

to defend our coast

because of Suisun Marsh

because of Walnut Creek

because of Oakland harbor

because of the Mojave Desert

because of Donner Lake

because of Inlet Drive Burnaby

because of Abbotsford BC

because of every place the oil spills

            we are coming Kinder Morgan

            to defend our coast

            and see our seas clean

            our rivers running clear

            

14

            —for Neil Smith (1954-2012)

Defender—say what you feel

and what you can defend

not that which is

dead but still dominant

burning neoliberal mind

throwing all there is

onto fossil fueled fire—

but that which is

alive but still languishing

call it an occupation

a global uprising that

still seeks the singularity

of a unified voice rising from

the four corners of our struggles

we know there must be more

than the homeless the millionaires

and the lonely middle class—sing

a is for alienation

b is for the bosses

c is for capitalism

and learn where the leaks lie

in the catastrophic chain—

that the ecological collapse

is the economic collapse

is the ecological collapse

is the collapse of a dead idea

now sing—as soon as this pub closes

as soon as this pub closes

as soon as this pub closes

the revolution begins!

13

How can it be

that the ground itself

does not sicken?

The tar is locked

in the sand for a reason:

what’s held in the earth

is not always meant

to spring forth to be burnt

not in this balance

of gasses we call air

Knowing is not

tested by the factual

but we go there

unreasonable in our

desires to find out

what transformations

fall from our social metabolism

taking up the material surround

to form our economies

and manufacture consent

But the understanding remains

a footprint in the sand

in which we will no clots

of oil to pool—no blackened

ducks wash up on this

imaginary shore so real

in its diverse life forms

a quick orchestral up-topia

where nothing dies for mechanism

and we wonder at living growths of spring

12

Petrochemical—

we’re all a bit queasy

plastic wrapping round

everything we hold

eat or sleep under or near

and effluent isn’t pretty

and the fumes are noxious

as we cower near

the chemical plants

while catalytic cracking

announces the cancers

of our daily routines

our fracked hearts open

our heads engulfed

in blue flames of progress

Petrostate—

there is a sort of resin

or film on my hands and eyes

I can feel it in my lungs too

like a lozenge melting

slow as polar ice

quick as changing climates

do you want to see every

possible compound

cracked from element?

Petrodisaster—

it’s because of all this

the soup we leech in

the particles we inhale

that we are coming to Victoria

11

Defenders—we will not

put our futures in

anyone’s blind trust—

these picture books

we are shown

full of cartoon

pie charts and

graphs where a

red line falls off

to the jagged right—

nothing says we have to

blindly trust them nor

the permanent precarity

they so coldly promise us

People of earth

everyday activists

defenders of this coast

here’s what we know

we can blindly trust—

the air our lungs need

the earth our feet walk

the water our rivers carry

the sun that fires our dreams

and the fact that together

we will stop these pipelines

allowing no corridors

for carbon—no fracked earth

for the accumulation of despair

10

because you cannot eat money

because the lung came from a swim bladder

because of the Burgess Shale

because we are aquatic creatures still

because of all the relatives rights

because of more than three billion years

because who the fuck are we to destroy all this?

because I like the idea of my grandchildren

            and my grandchildren’s grandchildren too

because once and this is true I worked on

            the water and an orca came close by

            the side of my boat and I could have

            reached out and touched its dorsal fin

            but I did not

because in the industrial revolution we

            outsources the body and now we are

            outsourcing the mind

because of the Exxon Valdez

because of Enron

because of Kalamazoo

because our representatives don’t represent

because of otters

because of shellfish and bivalvular life generally

because I have canoed many rivers and found

            them each a unique voice of this earth

because there is love and principle and

            responsibility which is the ability

            to respond and so I am responding now