Sunlight slams the naked earth. She lifts
her cultured raiment as she disembarks.
She holds lace dreams of little landscaped parks
aloof from festering soil, frontier thrifts,
cruel drafts that penetrate imperfect walls.
She has surveyed paradises all the way
across her own Atlantic; her Gaspé
is perfect; its suburban waterfalls
brook no revisions from reality.
A pause. Raw winds stir up eccentric leaves
along the angles of imagined eaves
in this perverse invention of the sea.
And now she walks distraught between the shores
of two impossibilities, too grand
to crash herself on freshly minted sand,
oblivious to future flags and wars.