For some reason it is one of the cleanest beaches. Can it be the Royal Vancouver Yacht club vacuums the Fraser River silt up every morning from around the barques, anchored for a not ungodly sum? In any case, the coliform keeps to either side. Or is it the Folk Fest, the Jazz Fest, or innocence of the Kids’ Fest that does not care and knows not how to count the fecal matter? With diapers in play, it ought to rise. Nevertheless, a mystery has been lured into the pale grey waters of the morning, there; much as the spirit of a spring, or well, might be caught, flirtatiously, in an urn in ancient Macedonia and toted home on some lovely lass’s shoulder. But even if the water tastes more of river than of sea, the purity is not quite drinkable.

That flavour and the man-made lagoon are why mallards and sundry marsh and river birds frequent its reeds and sloping shore. They have the sky and the land to themselves, now that the Sunderlands and Martin Mars are gone. Ornithologically speaking, anything that stiff-winged had to be a sitting duck. For a sky as yellow as a golden lab. Or one of the large dogs. There are scads of those.

JERICHO POND

The pink
Swan
Of the sun
Follows
Where duck have swum
Into the wan
Sink
Of evening shallows.
I think
I have gone
From
The bellows
Of the evening dogs with the geese
Into these reedy parentheses.