Oh Canada (as sung on Vancouver Island)

Another spring cracks open
on the rocks as the seagull drops
living mussels on stone shore,
alights to tear the flesh.

I know the fierce gull.
I know the creature
torn from its shell.

Amidst the carnage
the sea laps, laps,
licks the stone foot of the house,
sea like a beast,
sea like a beast I know.
When I was a child it almost killed me.
The one who went before,
my mermaid sister,
drowned.

Yet I have learned to love