Buon Giorno, Casa! The following poem was written about Toronto, a place I’ve never been, but the words inspire me to see my local city through fresh (or perhaps more accurately, ancient) eyes. I try to imagine what earth memories lay beneath the stones and steel girders…where do those memories manifest? How does the shape of the land shape the places in which we dwell? “There is No City that Does Not Dream” by Anne Michaels…
There is no city that does not dream
from its foundations. The lost lake
crumbling in the hands of the brickmakers,
the floor of the ravine where light lies broken
with the memory of rivers. All the winters
stored in that geologic
garden. Dinosaurs sleep in the subway
at Bloor and Shaw, a bed of bones
under the rumbling track. The storm
that lit the city with the voltage
of spring, when we were eighteen
on the clean earth. The ferry ride in the rain,
wind wet with wedding music and everything that
sings in the carbon of stone and bone
like a page of love, wind-lost from a hand, unread.
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As we build and create and leave our mark on the world,
may we feel the pulse of the land, even in our urban centres,
and seek always to live in harmony with the earth that sustains us.
Amen
