There’s the country somewhere outside the car.
The country where the elm fucks the maple
and the elm broods as if auditioning
for a new PBS miniseries.

There’s a poetry where trees don’t have sex,
when the yarrow observed from a car seat
can stand in, plain image, plain symbol,
and not be you observing me as overweight.

Outside, as the yarrow whips by, are towns
where Canadians happily live their lives,
unperturbed by who was excluded
from the Can Lit? Can Do! anthology.

Inside, the steady beat of country songs,
coffee with diet hazelnut creamer.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything
about the maple who gets so leafy.