Ode To Wayne Gretzky
We all carry the same genes,
and look how different we turn out;
I honed my skills for playing hockey,
and look how far I’ve come.
***
Note:
Wayne Gretzky was born in Brantford, Ontario, in 1961. He played junior hockey in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, for the Soo Greyhounds, and in 1978, signed with the Indianapolis Racers of the World Hockey Association (WHA). That same year, he was traded to the Edmonton Oilers of the WHA, who joined the National Hockey League (NHL) when the WHA folded. While with the Edmonton Oilers, Wayne and his fellow teammates won four Stanley Cups. Wayne Gretzky, aka “The Great One,” went on to play for the Los Angeles Kings and St. Louis Blues and ended his hockey career with the New York Rangers in 1999 following his retirement.
A Place of Creation
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Telephone City, Wayne Gretzky’s home town, the place of my birth.
Thirty three years, I played, worked and walked this piece of earth.
Given - by Sir Frederick Haldimand, “ Haldimand Proclamation, ” -
to the Iroquois, six miles, each side of the Grand River, the six Nation
Reserve, from its source to its mouth ( 950,000 acres ) 904,000 eradicated,
46,000 acres left for the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, the rest confiscated,
as the Oneida, Seneca and Tuscarora are left to share this land.
Most taken by many devious means at the white man’s hand.
This is the place I grew up, the place that educated me.
The mean Streets of Brantford, forty years I seldom see.
Three thousand miles, forty two years away.
Life has been, in many ways, lived within a fray.
Home is where the soul, the spirit, the heart is, anyway.
So out here in beautiful B. C., is where I will stay.
B. J. “A” 2
April 4th 2016
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