by daithí

“I come down from Canada

Come down hard on the wrong side of the law

But I was young, never hurt no one

Found my way, kept my face to the sun

Down from Canada”🇨🇦 *

At a time when rumors fly about Canadian fires and, yet again, tariffs are tossed at our neighbors to the north, a gathering of poets took place at the Haskell Library on July 24. Jean-Blaise Bourque shared the podium with Sharon Darrow. Jean-Blaise began with a bilingual introduction, alternating between French and English. He spoke about the community around Derby Line, where family and friends overlapped the arbitrary boundary set by two countries. In fact, the Haskell Library was first built in 1901 to serve neighbors from both sides of that line.

Sharon Darrow, the editor and initiator of The Country in the Mirror (Rootstock Publishing, April 21, 2026), had invited poets who contributed to the anthology to read their poems. The book was an intentional labor of love during these dark times in which we live. Some poets also shared the poems of other contributors who could not attend. We found ourselves in the sanctuary of mutual trust, respect, and defiance to inhumane and incomprehensible acts of our current political regime state-side. The overall feelings that the readings evoked were of solidarity along the lines that count: reaching toward mutual respect and that ever-elusive goal of justice and peace that most people strive toward.

“One old man, well he treat me kind

The old man had a heart of yellow pine

We never know no easy, never got no where

Just the end of a saw

and the cry of a logger’s prayer

To get home tonight…”*

It was a celebration of poetry and how verse can revisit and rebuild a renewal of the best possible world in which to share our resources. If anyone doubts the power of exorcism of evils through both individual and collective poetic discourse, the gathering of poets at the Haskell Library, the proof was evident at the shared readings.

Some man tried to take our land

In a suit of silk and and soft uncalloused hand

But the old man laughed and he turned away

Said ‘the clay you stand on

Is where I’ll sleep some day

But it ain’t today'”…*

* lyrics from Patti Casey’s “Down from Canada,”