Let’s Play Pretend

Me and my friend are at my house,

We are bored and tired and cannot go out.

My brain pops up with a brilliant idea

LET’S PLAY PRETEND!

Grab your backpack let’s go explore,

Through the jungle we push away bushes while we tumble.

LET’S PLAY PRETEND!

We drive an ice cream truck,

Children all ages screen wahoo, horray, yippee!

LET’S PLAY PRETEND!

We dive in the ocean to swim with the dolphins,

While our flippers keep on floppin’

LET’S PLAY PRETEND!

We soar in our spaceship, then land on the moon.

Oh well it is half past noon!

LET’S PLAY PRETEND!

We are at a pizzeria, flipping through the dough.

I spin the dough once, I spin it twice and oops it falls on my head!

LET’S PLAY PRETEND!

I yawned and so did my friend,

Both of us plopped on my bed.

The lights turned out, and

we fell fast asleep

by Kasvi Mavani

Grade 4, Walter & Gladys Hill Public School

Home is the Boreal

Flocking together,

Stuffed from berry-filled trees.

Waxwings fly home,

To the woods, in a breeze.

Attracting lovers,

With sounds of rhythm and rhyme.

Hairy Woodpeckers do not sing.

They peck on spruce and pine.

Though the Pileated Woodpeckers,

With flaming red chests.

Stop hikers in their tracks,

With a laugh above from the rest.

Gray Jay, the Whiskey Jack,

Full of boldness, and curse.

Are resourceful hoarders of the North.

And vocally diverse.

Often mistaken for a partridge,

Is the Ruffed Grouse.

They run on their toes in the winter,

Scurrying like a mouse.
Black-capped Chickadee,

Red-breasted Nuthatch,

The American Robin, all sing,

Bothering closed-in house cats.

The Western Tanager,

Known to be a tourist.

They come for few months only.

To raise new generations in the forest.

Then the Common Raven,

Known for being a thief.

Steals food from other flocks,

And people, with no grief.

Black-billed Magpies,

Stand out among the rest.

Their beautiful, aggressive demeanor.

Makes them one of Alberta’s best.

by Dawn Booth

The School Zone Bylaw

The school zone’s a place for bearing in mind that children are always about,
The slower the better is always the best, especially if there’s any doubt.
Of course you can drive like an idiot; a moron or dimwit or clown.
But don’t be surprised if you end up in jail for running some schoolchildren down.

Here is the how-do-you-do-it, for school zone rule driving remembering.
You have to proceed with care and restraint, no passing if you are dissembling.
The school zone’s speed is half sixty, the norm. Nearly nineteen if you prefer miles.
Anymore and the Mounties will have you, despite your vehement denials.

But wait! That low limit ain’t always, it’s half seven till just half past four.
And only when school is in session, so summer don’t count, that’s for sure.
(Oops, I meant doesn’t, not don’t – schools can still make me nervious).
I used to think I was all over that, but it seems I’m not yet impervious.

But back to the topic at hand, drive at thirty kilometres per hour,
Except Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays, plus alternative days that our
schools are not ever open, like Summer and sometimes on Fridays,
and Christmas and Spring Break and other time off – as my eyes are starting to glaze!

Yet despite how confusing it is, knowing when to calm down and go slower,
There’s an easier way to bear it in mind. And it’s something I’ll tell you right now… er?
“Weekends, Christmas, times off and vacations, Fridays mostly, days holi- and snow-.
Oh boy, it’s too hard to remember: if you drive past a school, just go slow”.

by Kevin Thornton

Not Sure I Could Explain

I know you’ve been gone a long while, in fact, several generations have passed since I sat on your knee. Sweat-rimmed engineer’s hat pushed back, exposing your farmer’s tan that ended at your eyebrows. Wisps of white hair, dandelion fluff, around your face. Sky eyes hiding behind that combine-sized nose.

Thought you might want to come for a visit, share your coal mining tales of explosions and second sights. I was too young the first time you told them.

If you come when the day draws back

you could have a wander around.

See the “improvements”. You’ll be happy to know they finally put the bridge over 9 Mile Creek. Yep…

a concrete testament to misplaced ambitions, four lanes wide. The creek ran dry when they dammed up above. Remember how Bess and Tilly pulled the farm truck through, in early spring flood? The snow-melt driving the water wild like two hundred head of spooked cattle

gone mad. We don’t get much snow now, lucky if we get an inch or two every few years.

You could tell Gramma that she wouldn’t be lonely anymore,

out there in the middle of the emptiness going stir-crazy for female conversation. Subdivisions border the edge of the fields; teeming cities of mushroom-cap roofs. She might miss the quiet.
I rebuilt the barn: it was time. Smaller though, the cows and pigs are gone. Bylaws state I can only keep chickens now, at least until 2010. I work in town; the farm’s been reclassified as hobby although I’m sure it never felt that way when you worked your way into stooped shoulders and a herniated disc.

There’s a four lane highway out front of the house. Take your life into your hands to cross: kinda like playing Russian Roulette.

Remember when you taught me how to ride my bike on the only pavement within miles?

Sometimes I see you, your easy gait, pushing the cows along, singing or cursing under your breath – I never knew which. You come in from the back fields at dusk when anything is possible.

by Cathy Yard

McMurray Trails

I walk the trails in Abasand,
With great joy and desire.

Over the forested hills,
I am always climbing higher.

In seasons of spring and summer and fall,
Of course in the winter its most of all.

I’ll walk the trails in Abasand,
Until the day I retire.

I walk the trails in Birchwood,
With frosted breath abundant.

Curving through the many paths,
Simply for the fun of it.

On bikes or sleds or skis or boots,
Wood buffalo activities taking root.

I’ll walk the trials in Birchwood,
Until I turn a hundred.

I walk the shores of the Athabasca,
Taking care not to fall in.
Casting a line looking for fish,
Natures beauty is callin’.

I walk in rain and Summer shine,
In Winter Spring or Fall time.
I’ll walk the shores of the Athabasca
Until that river runs dry. 

by James Hood

Giants of Mining

So now imagine a poet

finding himself in such environment.

After a while his focus shifts 

from “why” are these people doing 

whatever they are doing 

and he begins to turn his attention 

more to “how” are they doing, 

whatever they are doing.

He begins to notice 

new things about them,

things like working as if 

there is no tomorrow,

working as if 

their very life depends on it ,

working with a pride and dignity,

braving elements,

burning midnight oil,

tearing down old bridges 

and instead building a new one 

capable of carrying a  heavier load 

than any other bridge

that can be found spreading  

across the Athabascas  of the World.

Then he comes to a realization 

that how they approach their work 

is how he should approach his work.

After applying himself for a while 

in a such manner  those who know him 

give him a  nickname “The poems machine”.

After the steady outpour of poems

he comes to a new realization ,

perhaps even more important 

than the first realization 

that has set in motion the wheels 

of the poems machine.

He comes to a realization 

that in order for him to extract the verses 

he does not need object of his affection 

to be in front of him, 

for the crude from which 

his  verses are extracted from

is an under surface 

rather than above surface crude.

To prove this theory to be true 

he finds object of his affection 

at the furthest place on the planet 

from where he is ,

all the way on the other side of the world ,

and he builds the pipeline 

to deliver goods

to a random girl in India

by Mario M. Eric

Slender

A single whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips

Slender

Her body monstrous, legs with nasty scars

The monster that mocked her with a cold sneer whisper

“You are wider than any lady”

Bigger, Fatter! They howled with a sick glee.

Her soul descended into a nightmare

Her eyes were not subtle

As her shattered heart seemed to be.

To gaze upon her eyes was like drinking in the very elixir of life

But what did it matter?

“It’s a sin for wanting cake and to eat it too”.

She’d make herself ill

Because of the blind persistence which men and women impose on fellow creatures

Slender

Still, she shuddered at the thought that life might be long.

by Katerina Smid

Grade 9, Father Mercredi High School