Poetry

Over Fifty Years Later

I knelt down to tie her slightly scuffed saddle shoes. The laces had come undone as she skipped jauntily through the Midway. Toronto was beautiful, and so was she. The sky was clear as we drew near; a smile adorned her mouth and her welkin-blue eyes gleamed. It was a marvellous setting for a first date. It was just the beginning…

There it stood. It was majestic and mighty and right in front of us: The Flyer. Patty Conklin’s newest roller coaster was the talk of the Exhibition. To say she was excited would be a criminal understatement. She almost pulled my arm off as she moved us into line. I don’t think she stopped bouncing the entire wait – good, I thought, then maybe she wouldn’t notice my feeble attempt to stay calm. (My tight white T-shirt and dungarees represented the ideal, but James Dean I was not.)

We boarded, and I was nervous as hell. She, on the other hand, wore her giddy well. She wore everything well. We were off. I don’t know how fast it went, but I felt as though I’d been rocket-launched. As we twisted and turned, her auburn hair pranced in the wind, her face radiant as the sun serenaded it. I felt lucky. I would say that my heart fell into my lungs at the first precipitous drop, but it had already fallen, for her…

Over fifty years later, I still remember that day. The Flyer. My nervousness. Her eyes. My wife.

A Simple Spring

Boy and girl wake up next to each other, she, having to extricate herself from his grasp as she gets up to stretch and him, reticent to leave bed. A kettle is put on in the kitchen; they have a cup of tea while eating toast with home-made jam. Seeing that the jam is almost finished, they smile at each other and know what to do…They move outside and take in the mid-morning sunshine. She takes a deep breath and smells thyme and rosemary growing in the front yard. He inhales a sense of calm and sneaks a smile as she’s on bended knee, examining the first growth of a rose bud. Taking each other’s hand, they proceed to walk down a path, marvelling at the clearest of blue skies and warmth of early spring. A sparrow tends to its young up in a tree and the world seems to stop moving. Nothing else is important. It is their surroundings, it is their hearts aflutter, it is them…Walking deeper into the forest, rays of sunlight pierce through and touch ground, as a butterfly’s multi-coloured imprint is accentuated in the brightness. Finally they reach their mysterious destination and come upon a plant unlike any other. It is somehow able to grow raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, boisonberries, and blackberries, all on its relatively few branches. Happy at the sight of this wonderful and surreal piece of nature, he begins to pick some of the berries as she unwraps a loin cloth to put them in. Laughing as they pick and eat them, he comes in for an unexpected kiss, her blushing cheeks matching the vibrant red shade of the raspberries. They start to go back to the house, but not before they each give thanks in their heads. He for the Caribbean-blue water starkness of her eyes. She for the crimson-red hue that adorns his lips. Both of them for their one-of-a-kind tree and moreover, each other.