Google Earth

It looks like spring
when the Google vehicle
spied through our
neighbourhood.  The trees
and bushes are sullen
stick figures.  The
mountain ash still thrive
in the side  yard, not
victims of the ash parasite.
The car in the driveway
has yet to be destroyed
by a runaway Freightliner
truck.  My mother
has survived her
cancer surgery and is
ranting and raving against
the world’s expectations.

We were photographed
at a moment when....

Everything is different
today, the reality which
is presented no more than
a fleeting memory.  In
the scheme of things,
no more than a game
of always late
catch-up by history.

The Argument

There is no truth,
there are two shores.
The first meanders along
the lines of
imagination.  The other
follows the script
laid down by experience.

They are both a map to
this amalgam of
the reality which exists.

You go first, tell me
what the world is,
what the world does,
how it interacts with
who you are.

I’ll refute each statement.
I’ll rebuild each situation,
until the vector to arrival
equals where I am.

And you still won’t be wrong.

 

Photos

Time seems to cuddle
two shores — before death
and after.

You’re young, the moon
curls around your face
and you smile.

The background is
Niagara Falls, winter,
seagulls against snow.

You sip Chardonnay, consume
bread slips and cheese,
punctuate each moment

with a laugh, regurgitate
tales from the latest
case against traffic

in the inner core.
You applaud mass transit,
mass machinations of

people owning the environment.
The cough arrives later,
somewhere after the annual

sleigh rides through
Mennonite country,
wineskins depleted

and retirement, the parties,
the accolades, the evenings
in palliative care

when we visited, you
trailing tubes, stating
that you were past

your best before date,
gasping for each breath,
the rhythm slowing

like a dance winding down
into faltering steps,
you dancing on until.