My feet drawn down the vacant road
More wide and grey than ever
Late winter sun attempts to warm the dirty ice
but can’t
and storm-ripe air is giving way to northern might.
I hunch my shoulders
pass the few who break the mold
who brave the virus and the cold:
The homeless
The dog walkers
The old.
I’m not going anywhere,
my feet point where they’re told.
Darkened windows haunt my favourite haunts
Businesses limited to need
not wants.
Heading to the LRT and feeling guilty –
who infects the next to die,
will it be me?
I push the thought away
I’m no coward and no fool
I serve a higher power and a higher rule
and I won’t touch them.
I have to go –
He’s calling me I don’t know where
He has a message.
If I refuse to follow,
I’ll never know.
At edge of empty lot I stop and stare
The lot, and in the distant city peaks are bare
Parliament peeks into roof of cloud
“It’s coming, the storm is coming.”
I continue walking while I’m still allowed.
The underpass is quieter tonight
No clip-clap of shoes racing home
Their jobs have all been eaten by the blight.
I hesitate to get on board
I stop,
I breathe deep and feel my belly
push against foreboding weight –
I stop because I found it –
The pulling of the Lord.
My lips can’t stop their silent murmurs
Prayers tumble out of me unheard
as I walk further
An urgency as wind picks up
and something arctic-cold
It’s everywhere –
The trying warm is driven out
The cold is back
The freeze-
The cold’s what it’s about.
My fingers numb I cannot stop
around the bend
Twilight periwinkle bruising blue
descends
and in another twenty steps
my path ends.
I hear it then:
The chilling wind is angled right
to hit the tube
An eerie concrete tunnel ‘tween the trains
hums a cold peculiar tune
and draws me in.
It’s picking up.
Change has come and
plays us like a flute
I stand and see the spires of Parliament
The empty trains plough by
My body’s humming
strange sound released by sky.
a strange sound has come
a concrete concert
It’s blowing ‘cross our lands like reeds
I don’t just hear but feel it in my gut
as air gives way to air the weather shifts
The sound has been released.
I know enough to pray,
but don’t know what.
//by Dusty May Taylor, 2020
dustymaytaylor.com 