The following poem was written by Alex Rose and published in his book First Burial in Spring. Alex read this at Jen’s Celebration of Life. He drew inspiration from the wilds of northwestern B.C. and Jen’s love of the landscape.
Deo Gratias — Northern River
Deo Gratias! Give thanks for a riverscape of rock and plunge pools
For souse holes uncounted, tightly coiled eddies and noisy cascades
For the Nass River estuary itself where summer light glazes the mint-green surface
Where the current coils and tightens.
Give thanks for the wind-whipped stands of cottonwood lining the braided valley all the way to Meziadin
For the purple colour of the lava fields whose luminescence brightens the dull monochrome of rain season.
Deo Gratias. Give thanks.
Give thanks for the sound of the river in the switchbacks at Canyon City
Give thanks for the long strands of eelgrass
For the eelgrass combed straight by the current.
Give thanks for a changing view, as we stand to look from the boat, riverbank to riverbank, where the water falls in a hundred different ways
Here, everything is as it is, one way or the other.
What does it all add up to, after all?
Deo Gratias.
Jennifer Lang 