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| We are the people of the shell
of the smell of beach rocks and woods we are not the people of the puffin, nor the sou�wester, nor the newfie outhouse as funny as the concept may be, it is grossly exaggerated. neither do we have a patent on kitchen parties as I find it hard to believe no one else in the world�s 6 billion people has ever partied in a kitchen. like the Romans we take these stories and make them our own. Romeo and Juliet? Yes my son, that happened up the shore a few years ago. Aladdin and his lamp? That too. Only his name was Baz and it wasn�t a lamp but a barrel and it wasn�t a genie but a codfish, shining in silver gleaming. And he granted no wishes. we are the people of hills and rock and our own stories have been lost and found and lost again. we are not Irish, though some of us may claim that descendency and we are not the only place with fog, though I think if we could actually bottle it we would. I saw the Newfoundland flag raised next to the old republic flag, both flying proudly and dumbly on a true patriots lawn. this, above all, should explain our inadequacies. we claim to be eldest this side of the sea but we�re just reaching puberty born into a richness of culture and history (two words I swore never to use in a poem, let alone side by side) blindly feeling our way through the cold winters dark that we profess to love. we are the people of reaching reaching for that which is ourselves and I wish now on every star over the Atlantic, every dinner theatre, every mummer past and present, every wreath of remembrance, every catchy tee shirt and every jigs dinner that we will fail. because, if anything, it is the reaching and stumbling that makes us who we are. and of that, I am proud. |