a Sunday walk in the Okanagan

in the distance hills are full of grouse
whose comical hop when they come close
makes me giggle

and across the sand beach
right here beside me
more than a gaggle of green-tipped geese

waddle by water, and like me,
in this blue-sky lake, wade in on splayed
feet to glide, to slide a hundred strong

in the late fall sun.
i stop to smell still-blooming roses
to taste the last golden raspberries

and gather green tomatoes
beside orchards where birds feed
on remnants of apples

and different days, when other eyes
beheld them rising from the trees,
sated, before winter came.

red decorates bushes in a pre-
season frenzy, flames beside
colours i remember, harbingers

of the surprise of snow,
but i walk steadily, past mansions
or vintage, some Spanish clay,

think already of the blossoms
which will hold this valley in their
centres, yield again to fruit, and birds.