Saturday, May 7, 2011

Detour

Apologies for the delay in posting, I spent a full day at the office yesterday and somewhere in between booking subscriptions and printing invoices, the post slipped my mind. You do get a double feature on this glorious Saturday, though!

This poem was written on a bus trip I took on one of those nights where I was feeling restless. Rather than take the 8 Millwoods to my house, I took the 1 Capilano all the way to its transit centre, just to see what that particular route looks like.


last night, I took the bus
40 blocks past my street
just so I could glimpse
the unearthly lights of Refinery Row
this no-man’s zone, this lonely home
like something from a science fiction comic book
that single place unknown

as the bus bumped through
the cool, blue night
and the orange staring street lamps
become a thousand seers high above me
I realized how little I know about these sidewalks

the fluorescent signs scream through the dark silhouettes
WE EXIST
like the child who screams
for want of a tender touch
for want of recognition as something beyond
a shell to be filled
with the invented stories of the sea
and all its monsters

1 comment:

  1. I love this poem, Bevin! What a beautiful exploration of deliberate adventure I think more of us should embark on.

    Just a quick grammar comment, though: Should "it's" in the last line not be "its" as it's possecive and not a contraction of "it is"?

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