Trans-Canada Highway

I cannot now remember all the kind people
who transported my younger self
along the Trans-Canada Highway
from Toronto to Vancouver:
the wacky couple from Georgian Bay
who thought I looked like a Beatle
but spoke like Prince Charles.
The drunk who was arrested in Sault Ste Marie.
The man who laughed when I called the road    
a dual carriageway and said
Do you still have carriages in England?
The father and son who took me slowly across
Manitoba and Saskatchewan in a yellow school bus
bound for Red Deer or somewhere.

At Banff Springs Hotel, the manager asked
Do you have any black pants? No.
Pity. You could have been a waiter.
Instead I was dressed in brown as a groundsman.
One or two summers later I read In Cold Blood
and shuddered to think what else might have happened.