I see them again, up close now, as I drive the car out of the garage. They are going to the park on the lake. Wearing black masks, gloves, rubber boots, and carrying plastic garbage bags, they march purposefully to the bounty they will harvest on the lakeshore. They are laughing; one of them must have told a joke. It is just a job. I stop the car and let them pass, as one does for a funeral procession.
“Dead, ill birds found along waterfront” screams the front page of the morning paper. “About 30 Canada geese were found by city staff” …
Bio:
Greta du Bois Cleynhens, born in Belgium, lived most of her life in Africa. Her modern languages studies in Brussels enabled her to work as a freelance translator and interpreter while pursuing an airline management career. Now a Canadian citizen, she lives in Kingston, Ontario. She writes about her youth in the Congo and her observations of present-day Canada. Her work has appeared in two collections of Canadian poetry and has also been published by the Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec.