Summer’s End, 1968

Off Pembina Highway, in a motel room,
My mother cries, but won’t explain her reasons.
Is Winnipeg an unexpected tomb,
Located at the back end of warm seasons,
Or is it something else, in her own body?
She’s forty-two, and this is no vacation:
It’s a motel, cheap, dank, a little shoddy,
And maybe that’s the only explanation.
We’ve come here because last spring she wept
When Dr. King was shot, and she insisted,
And our arrival is a promise kept.
Indeed, who could have argued, or resisted?
She’ll make the most of this, as decades pass,
And she will demonstrate iron and class.