A guilty pleasure. For some, it’s ice cream. For others, it’s Netflix. Then, of course, there’s beer, something I can get behind. But my real guilty pleasure is writing about cities no one cares about, preferably in poetry format. Calgary—you’re up.
You lie north of Montana
No, not the one called Hannah
I’m talking about the US state that’s scary
The one with strange people of which I am wary
But you’re different up in the Great White North
I’ll go ahead and call you Calgary henceforth
You have more people than that entire state
From all over the world they come accumulate
You started as a dot on the Canadian plains
But the dot grew when the railroad brought trains
You dabbled in agriculture and things like that
But it’s something else that made you get fat
I’m talking, of course, about oil and gas
You’re like Saudi Arabia among the tall grass
That stuff has been your GDP’s buoy
And made your residents come across as showy
At this point your metro is about 1.5 million
Many millionaires per capita—along with their minions
All that money makes for a nice skyline
Where two rivers meet, your modern skyscrapers shine
You’ve been ranked among the most livable cities on Earth
Up there with Vienna and Zurich is your worth
You got all the crap that urbanites demand
Restaurants, museums, and probably some indie bands
In music, you’ve actually done okay
I mean, not everyone can boast Tate McRae
And from some nearby town came the ones who get flak
Who doesn’t love to hate on Nickelback?
You’ve nurtured other famous people too
Like Stephen Harper, Mark Rypien, and the loser Ted Cruz
The Hart family of wrestlers is from around there
As are a bunch of NHL players—apparently someone cares
You have the Calgary Tower and state-of-the-art libraries
Miles of skyways so your people don’t freeze
You host a massive rodeo called the Calgary Stampede
And you’re home to Canada’s most lucrative companies
Chinatown, Stephen Avenue, parks, and light rail
Arts and theater so things don’t get stale
The Peace Bridge and an arena that looks like a saddle
The fine line between liberal and conservative you straddle
I guess a bunch of movies have been filmed in your sprawl
Brokeback Mountain, Dances with Wolves, Legends of the Fall
Doctor Zhivago and the Eastwood classic Unforgiven
And according to Wikipedia, even The Revenant and Inception
But it’s your surroundings that set you apart
The Canadian Rockies to your west, they give you heart
They landed you the Winter Olympics in 1988
And Banff National Park—that’s striking real estate
You’re in effect a rather interesting place
Where the endless prairies meet the mountains with grace
Irreligious and welcoming to allophones
Though not as laissez-faire as the more coastal zones
Calgary, one day soon I plan to visit you
But not because I have a burning desire to
It’s because I can then start to brag about it
Isn’t that the point of this yuppie-ass sh*t?
2 Responses
Beautiful poem indeed. Very informative,
Thank you!