When the man took office
I was driving down the road in another country—
Cascadia, warm wet slide along the western wall.

To the south was a run of highway someone had blasted
through basalt, on the way to Ellensburg

and the ice puckered
and rain loomed across the strait
and five-hundred-thousand women
were ready to march on Washington.

I stopped at a light and a squirrel ran across the
road, checking his pocket watch. I’m-late-I’m-late-I’m
too damn late, but I was listening to Canned Heat and didn’t
hear him.

And over a hill, the memory of woods; echoes
of hushed vigils with beasts. And the grey was
impermeable, no door in the clouds, but there was a

backhoe trouncing its way through an empty lot,
crunching up shells.

And that song was playing—the one about going up the country
to a place I’ve never been;
and someone was talking in the background
BBC coming through a signal warp to our fucked continent.

So I drove while the squirrel went somewhere.
And there were pot-holes, and the radio was fuzzy;
and trees, the ones that were left, stood guard with crows.
And the whole place—this wailing edge, this subduction zone,
last outpost on the continent—
drew itself in, called down an Avalonian
mist, and prepared
for winter.



Photograph by Jon-Mark Wiltshire.

Melinda Price Wiltshire’s fiction, poetry and reviews have appeared in Grain, The Antigonish Review, The Malahat Review, The Nashwaak Review and The New Orphic Review, as well as in Brick Books’ Celebration of Canadian Poetry. Her recent publications include an essay in Queen’s Quarterly (Summer 2019) and a curtal sonnet in The Malahat Review. She has fiction upcoming in the fall issue of STORY.

Jon-Mark Wiltshire is a wedding photographer based in Victoria, BC  who’s been capturing memories and creating art for couples since 2007. Follow him on Instagram at @jonmarkphoto.