Back to Walking Tour menu »

Bethune Street Beauty

It’s all big trucks backing up out there
today. The “re-design” is supposed to teach 
the local kids to appreciate monkey bars again,
cure the house market in the area, aid 
the elderly’s will to sit somewhere green,
stare into a new gloom, this new view 
of blue sky, taped-off for renovation―

once they’ve painted the last faux-cobble
I’ll double you on my old beater bicycle:
we’ll put new handlebar streamers on ‘er, 
cards in the spokes, paint ‘er a nice true blue,
she may never be right again but she’ll fool ‘em
all with all that speed and circumstance, 
made new, and what’s new’s so fast―

we’ll head on down to the ribbon-cutting
once the trumpets die down,
once the stroller-owners have picked the sandbox clean
of syringes and bottle caps, no more heavy trucks and promise 
of something new beeping ever-backward, the screeching, the dumping: 
at the opening bbq the city councillor takes over, 
his winning handshakes transforming nothing―

-JM

---

© John Climenhage 2020

---