IV: My Father Is Dying

The stillness of the swings hushes
even the fret of birdsong. The linden
is thick with pale green flowers so
prodigal that it would make the city
animals whisper Eden in undertones, would
make the pigeons chuckle behind the plinth
to Sibelius, make small squirrels nestle
in the elbows of massive branches if
only they could talk like poets. Where
is Hartford's old philosopher now I
need him to cool my images, to bring
me down to bone-zero, to marrowless
reality? In this island kingdom where the
tide of traffic is pressed to a rustling
whisper of recrimination beyond Dupont,
beyond Spadina, my own childhood of alleys
of tunnelling light and summer blazing
streetcorners is lost, quite lost.

The stillness of the swings opens once
empty corridors of memory to daycares of
raucous children straggling on the ridge
of twilight like Bergman's dying citizens.
The silence bears like spiritual seed
the seamless clatter of boys on skateboards
and girls spiralling on rollerblades
windless. The sunlight cracks a
smile of pleasure remembering foolish
riddles and the sidewalk subtly
rumbling swears this city is awash
in warranted joy. After all this
suffering, even in all this suffering,
we deserve it.

The silence of the swings is the
stillness of age awaiting death
empty or angry or frisking ghostly
with its imaginings like a pair of
kittens in the yard. There is
joy in everything, more than our
simple lives can credit, but we must
touch it, bone-zero, marrowless
clarity. The stillness of the swings
hushes even the fret of birdsong.