Heavenly Tones

The sky so wide,
Laced cherry through carnation canvas
Egg shell fringe dare hide
Swirling buff cream clouds darken
Sun sleeping—fading away
Sky scrape taking hold
Heaven’s tone
Surprise rose, my stilling stare
Light meets tone—captures color
Sweet majesty entrances me


Perhaps I’m still use to my former southern Oregon home where the sky is framed by mountain ranges. Looking to the zenith rivalled glancing out a green-framed window. Perhaps in Wolf Creek—nestled in the bosom of the Rogue Mountains, an appendage of the Cascade Mountain Range—I had a natural frame of reference to measure the distant between the heavens and my head. Perhaps time has faded my memory, but I don't remember clouds looming on the horizon.





Perhaps here in my new home of Calgary—roughly 2000 miles closer to the sun, moon, and stars, than Wolf Creek—the puffy clouds are simply closer, the wispy passing ivory haze could almost kiss my cheek.

I know the crimson sky at sunset is sunlight reflecting through natural and artificial air contaminants. I know wind creates the dramatic swirling patterns in opaque clouds. Yet looking up to canvas above I know painters hundreds of years ago depicted their God’s breath in the heavens.

You can't duck winter

Dried leaves
Browning grass
Balding trees

Evidence Everywhere

The weather turning, churning cold chill
Refreshing, startling, thrill
Breeze ruffles through feathers, gracing goose-bumped skin.
The wind, the season, the pond all heeds the tell-tale call
Water, bowing, turns stone
Winter’s here
Sweet summer sinking debris now prone
To stand not float
Feathers touch ice

After being cooped up in our little townhouse for a couple of days, we ventured out in need of fresh air and a place to jump without fear of bothering our downstairs neighbours. My four-year-old girl watched Angelina the Ballerina and now aspires to prance, hop, and jump ballet. Leaving the house, a need to reconnect to nature drove us to Confederation Park.For us newly mint expatriates, the changing season is rather unnerving. Snow on my deck has not melted although it only snowed once a month ago, and leaving the house without a long coat is not an option even on the sunniest of days. With each passing day, we struggle to adapt to the shorter days, biting wind, and the unknown “real” winter as our native neighbours dub the impending season. Among the turning autumn colours—tan grass, dead leaves and bare trees—we found ducks out of water. In the pond, a top layer of ice covered the wet depths, leaving the fowls with no choice but to stand on their pond. The metaphor wasn’t lost on me. We may feel out of place, Calgary may be a slightly different world for us, but we aren’t ducks out of water.

Empty Rays

Alluring light
Blinding bright
Against glass sparkling pass
With warmth promise
Red nosed though
The frosty air amiss
Anemoi—Boreas blows
Cold North undaunted rose
Frost bites, wind burns
In caps, gloves, scarves,
We venture through shining, empty rays
Seeing day
Yet feeling night


(City Hall, Downtown Calgary, Ab)

Leaving the house, my four-year-old daughter and I were optimistic about the day. The sun shone with glorious brilliance. White, eggshell shaded clouds hung against a powder-blue sky. How could we suppress the desire to explore the city, escaping my artificially lit house? While the thermometer read 15 Celsius or about 60 Fahrenheit, the wind whipped through the balding trees and barely repelled by our jackets. Wrapped tightly, we ventured out, taking photos along the way and the product of our adventures—inspiration.

(Lightrail train station in downtown Calgary, AB)

So What’s Up North? Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness!

After living in southern Oregon for nearly half my life, and after graduating from Southern Oregon University, I had the opportunity to relocate. I relished the opportunity to pack up my husband, my four-year-old daughter, and our life to find a new home. But where?

In searching for a new home, I sought a city that would offer personal and professional opportunity, tolerance and equality, and above all lack of discrimination. Unfortunately there seems to be a difference between tolerance and a lack of discrimination. Case in point, in the 2008 election, the citizens of California and Florida voted for Barack Obama to be the first African-American President yet against gay marriage, banning marriage rights for a complete section of the population.

As an American I have been raised to embrace the notion that the United States has two outstretched arms welcoming anyone and everyone. We live in a tossed salad of cultural variety or a soup pot of ethnic diversity. Yet America is the land of opportunity for some, we have a long history of offering freedom to some at the expense of others.

I want to raise my daughter to be culturally comfortable, ethnically aware and above all accepting. I want to raise my daughter in a tossed salad of equality—to borrow that metaphor.

I know, I am asking a lot. In my quest for blended, accepting equality, I found myself peering over the US border. I found Calgary Alberta, with 20% of its population considered “visibly diverse.” Calgary located in a nation that sponsors and protects cultural and ethnic diversity through a network of federally funded programs and government regulations. From programs to support publishing companies printing books and magazines telling the nation’s histories to separate religious, publicly funded schools, the general national theme seems to be acceptance.

I discovered a country that has lessened finically based discrimination by providing a wealth of social programs, namely socialized medicine for everyone—citizens, permanent residences, and individuals on visas. For a nominal fee, my family had health coverage from the day we entered the country.

I discovered a nation where marriage is not modified based on sexual orientation: Marriage is marriage regardless of the genders involved.

I discovered Canada.