Whenever I ask about the weather
She looks at her phone.
Whenever I ask if there are clouds in the sky,
She looks at her phone.
Whenever I ask her opinion
I think I’m watching television.
Category: Poetry
The Road
I used to be ready to join whatever came along.
And what used to come along were people like me,
People whose strings had come unstrung;
Mapless – like Hansel and Gretel chasing crumbs by a translucent glass dividing life and middle class’
Flickering out to highways like galaxies in a dark night’s sky.
The Underground
and her own mind
Desolate and wild as the wind.
Faces along the east-west subway
Faces I didn’t know were there
Till the TTC planned a trip for me
Up a path where wind bites, blowin’
To Maine where motorized lame keep comin’ and goin’.
Passed imploring arms, out from the walk at a wall.
And a lady screaming she wants to be left alone
With bags on her arms transfixed under heaven;
And her life
And her own mind
Desolate and wild as the wind.
Guarding the underground: a man displaying coins in a stack pleasantly solicits more.
Poetry/Prose
Poetry says what a writer means – prose what a writer thinks about.
Weather
Sun wallowing bellow the horizon
You drove against our first torrent of snow;
Snow that outlasted a mid-winter thaw
Then icy rains that sealed it into slippery mounds,
Until now: a week before spring.
Waking plants keep trying to see the sun.
Dundas and Spadina
In China Town’s
Teaming, sun-steamed streets,
Oriental ladies
Trundle
Chinese-charactered plastic bags
Weighted strait down
To their shuffle stepping feet
Under eyes as implacable as stars.
Now comes spring
Hear it ring against the walk:
April’s spray
Splashing tender shoots to summer roots,
Rising green on blue,
And waving warm in a glory of gliding gold.
