Mastering the Manitoban winter from their heated seats
the local gentry roll into downtown
past snowbanks that hoard the gloaming’s last light
to drop their daughters off for ballet class.

All their princesses in a row,
the mothers stand at  attention, pull back
young hair in too-taut buns, stretching scalps.
Tablets in hand, the dads scramble
for position around power outlets,
streaming on demand, elsewise haggle
with customer service over surcharges,
the cost of pointe shoes and leotards.

The talk is business, family, politics—
when conversation moves where it shouldn’t,
defending Canadian values from the wrong sorts,
shit-talking immigrants and the plebs in sotto voce
because American bombast can’t happen here.
Mums stand by the studio doors to watch their treasures
Tendu and volé, bodies tuned to barked instruction—
Pavlovian responses to the Sun King’s French.

The lesson finished, the husbands,
(wives at their sides) wait to retrieve
their daughters, pure as driven snow. They keep
car doors bolted, stay watchful for any shenanigans.
Sightings of drunks, beggars, shabbiness
are passed on to the authorities.

                                                   The ideal family

is both the pumice stone and the bloody hands.
The headlights slice up the night, tires
leave trepanation scars through the snow—
a regal procession of Beamers and Saabs thru suburbia’s gates.