Tonight's Poet Corner: When I Couldn't Move to Canada

When I Couldn't Move to Canada
by Belinda Roddie

Disillusioned by my country, I sailed
a boat to a coast where seashells cut
the sky into strings of gold that grazed their
ridges. I had the Atlantic breeze on my back,

salt and sun and half-heartedly subdued sorrow,
as I managed a trek to a village where a kettle
of hot, strong tea awaited me, offered by
a very kind woman in an old, black shawl.

"There are lots of bullies where you come from,"
she remarked as I sipped the simmering brew,
the skin on her lips peeling but not taking the shine
away from her smile. "I should know. I have
a television set."

Bullies, yes. Red-faced and hungry for a future
that I wanted no part of. Nor did they want me
to share in it, either.

I wrote a letter to my wife as soon as I could get
my hands on a pen and paper. The one mailbox
in the seaside town awaited its next meal, a feast
of sentimentality and bloated apologies. I used the

visage of a queen as a stamp, and I remained the stalwart
coward, hiding in a hamlet where no one knew
my name, and no demagogues leveled a finger
at me in a faceless crowd, and no one summoned
me to the All-American Guillotine.