Federal and provincial governments
to help Ottawa clean its river.
Huge storage tanks
will prevent raw sewage
from spilling into the waterway.
They all came for the announcement:
the Mayor, the MP, the MPP,
and the Federal Minister in charge.
It was a great photo-op:
a million citizens
– most of them toilet-trained –
are asking others to help in the clean-up
after using the washroom.
Just the place to be
if you’re a politician
with a healthy sense of
smell.
(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every Sunday)
