In the town of Loughborough, where sheep
Outnumber people, and the rain falls soft,
There lived a man named Bob, who had a dream
To build a rocket ship from old tin cans

He scoured the town for parts, a toaster here,
A broken vacuum there, and soon enough,
His yard became a scrapyard, much to the
Dismay of Mrs. Crumble next door.

“Bob, what on earth are you up to?” she’d shout,
As he welded bits of metal in the night.
“I’m off to Mars, dear Crumble, can’t you see?
I’ve got a date with destiny and stars!”

The townsfolk gathered 'round to watch the show,
As Bob unveiled his masterpiece of junk.
With duct tape, glue, and hope, he climbed inside,
And pressed a button labelled “Up We Go!”

The rocket sputtered, coughed, and then it soared,
A tin can comet streaking through the sky.
The sheep looked up, bemused, and chewed their cud,
While Mrs. Crumble fainted on the spot.

Bob’s rocket flew past clouds and birds and planes,
And soon enough, he found himself in space.
He marvelled at the stars, the moon, the Earth,
And thought, “Well, this is quite a lovely view.”

But then he heard a clank, a groan, a snap,
And realized his ship was failing fast.
He grabbed a wrench, a hammer, and some tape,
And tried to fix the mess he’d made of things.

Alas, poor Bob, his rocket was no match
For gravity’s relentless, mighty pull.
He crash-landed in a farmer’s field of corn,
And crawled out, dazed, but grinning ear to ear.

The farmer scratched his head and asked,
“What now?” Bob laughed and said, “I think I’ll try again.
But first, a cup of tea, a nap, and then,
I’ll build a better rocket, just you wait!”

And so, in Loughborough, the legend grew,
Of Bob, the man who aimed to reach the stars,
With nothing but his wits, some junk, and dreams,
And made the town a little brighter too.

I sailed the fjords between Powell River and
Drury Inlet to beyond the Salish Sea.
The land itself spoke from mountains, water falls, islets
From bird song and bear splashing fishers
From rutting moose and cougars sharp incisors.
The place has a scale that needs no advisers
But in our bodies felt, sensed in our story talking.
The Chinese spoke of sensing place by the four dignities
Of Standing of Reposing of Sitting or of Walking.
Indigenous peoples of the passage added of Paddling by degrees
For the Haida and Salish sang their paddles to taboos
To the rhythm of the drum in their clan crested canoes.
Trunks transformed indwelling people who swam like trees.
First Nations marked this land, made drawings above sacred screes
As they walked together, to gather, share and thank the spirit saplings.
So Dao-pilgrims in the blue sacred mountains of Japan rang their ramblings.
Now the loggers’ chainsaws were silent like men who had sinned.
I motored now for of wind not a trace -
I could see stories from the slopes, hear tales in the wind.
Modern hieroglyphs spoke from clear-cuts both convex and concave.
Slopes of burgundy and orange bark shaves
Atop the beige hills, and in the gullies the silver drying snags
and the brilliant pink of fire **** tags
A tapestry of  times in work.
A museum of lives that lurk.
Once the logging camps floated close to the head of inlets.
Now rusting red donkeys and cables no longer creak,
Nor do standing spar trees sway near feller notched trunks,
Nor do grappler yarders shriek as men bag booms and
Dump bundles in bull pens.
The names bespeak the work.
Bull buckers, rigging slingers, cat skinners, boom men and whistle punks.
…………………………………………………………………….
Ashore to *** with my dog I saw a ball of crushed bones in ****
Later we heard the evocative howl of a wolf
And my pooch and I go along with the song
Conjoining  with the animal call
In a natural world fearsome, sacred and shared.
---------------------------------------------------------­---
Old bunk houses have tumbled, crumbling fish canneries no longer reek.
Vietnam Draft dodgers and Canucks that followed the loggers forever borrowed -
Their hoisting winches, engines, cutlery, fuel, grease and generators.
While white shells rattled down the ebbing sea.
Listing float homes still grumble when hauled on hard.
Somber silhouettes of teetering totems no longer whisper in westerlies
Near undulating kelp beds of Mamalilakula.
Petroglyphs talk in pictures veiled by vines.
History is a tapestry
And land is the loom.
Every rock, headland, and blissful fearsome bay
Has a silence that speaks when I hear it.
Has a roar of death from peaking storms when I see it.
Beings and things can be heard and seen that
Enter and pass through me to evaporate like mist
From a rain dropped forest fist
And are composted into soil.
Where mountains heavily wade into the sea
To resemble yes the tremble and dissemble
Of the continental shelf.
Where still waters of deception
Hide the tsunamis surging stealth.
Inside the veins of Mother Earth the magmas flow
Beneath fjords where crystalised glaziers glow.
Here sailed I, my dog and catboat
Of ‘Bill Garden’ build
The H. Daniel Hayes
In mountain water stilled
In a golden glory of my remaining days.
In Cascadia the images sang and thrilled
Mamalilikula, Kwak’wala, Namu, Klemtu
The Inlets Jervis, Toba, Bute, and Loughborough.