Balance Poem by Nassy Fesharaki

Balance

On Highway Eighty Five
Things happen in wild way
Farmers are Mennonites
Tourists ride motor bikes.

Mennonites’ lands, flat
Ploughed, sowed, sprouts
Here, there, man, woman
On machine, large combine
Or checking the meadows.

Absentees of class are trees
And true residents, First Nations.

“What went on? ” I questioned.
The guide in museum pointed:
“Saws, axes and rakes, hoes”

Mennonites and their kinds
Children of divide, subdivide
With letter of Luther on a wall,
Directly pointing at the Pope:
“Dirty house is corrupt.”
Scattered, killed balance.

“We shoot hogs” said priest.
Ground-hogs and rabbits destroyed
Instead pig-hog and the swine are dear.

“Trees were enemies” told me Bill
“They were cut, became house;
The excess was burned wild.”

Immigrants came here
Changed balance
Not for good
Disaster.