Tribal paint flickers
as illumination passes by
packed platforms of private souls
spilling into peripheral vision
Saturday nights
create fresh perspective
on unconscious thoughts
An unpulled can
of tired, bow-tied Spaniards
and white-clad partygoers
Tinney earphones
thrusting Brooklyn's finest
99 Problems aren't on my mind
but in my (un)willing ears
And I saw you on the street
42nd I'd say
I was filling my lungs
with the poison,
beautiful,
you showed me
You walked past me
just another stranger
you in 10 years time
They say everyone has a doppelganger in NYC
I haven't seen mine
but she's seen me
and Brooke saw her too,
rolled up Levis and a frown
you looked as beautiful as you always did
but clean of everything
you'd ever touched
or is yet to touch you
because nicky clouds
my thoughts lift me higher
I wanted to tell you that
I pray now
But I let you walk by
and disappear
leaving me with myself
coffee spilt from matches
got twisted and wouldn't light
I'm one handed,
crowded city but you're not here.

An Extraordinary Ordinary Life

            For Mrs. Tinney Davidson, The Waving Grandma
                               Comox, British Columbia

She lived in an ordinary house in an ordinary street
And every day she waved to children passing by
And every day the waved-at children waved back
Because a wave is a good beginning to the day

In the morning she waved the children along to school
And in the evening waved them back again home
And every day the waved-at children waved back
Just like the waves that hug a beach, with love

And then one day she went away, and waved -
And the waved-at children will wave back forever

Extraordinary!

(cf. Here and Now, CBC St. John’s, 26 April 2019)