DOWN BY ONTARIO PLACE

Thursday, July 22, 2010

DOWN BY ONTARIO PLACE

By Philip Cairns

Copyright 2010 by Philip Cairns

In romance, all the best ones are taken.
What’s left are the abusive, coke-addicted sociopaths.
Why get involved with sticks of dynamite?
Maybe it’s the blind, hot sex.
Or, sometimes, they’re the only game in town.

It’s very gorgeous sitting beside the lake
With pen in hand
And the hot sun beating down upon me.
The water is a deep, inky, blue-black colour.

Helicopters fly over-head.
Geese quack as they float by.
Words fly out of my brain.
I can pretend that I’m rich,
In the south of France,
Buying expensive trinkets to take back to my villa by the sea.
Or I can just sit here,
Soaking in the exquisite melting beauty of the July day.

Learning lines for a play,
Is not as much fun as doing lines with a straw.
The former is better for your brain, though.
Life is a very quirky deal.

The geese are squawking away,
Like a symphonic cacophony.
They sound like singers warming up before a show.
What has thrilled them so,
As they drift by in the dirty, murky fluid?

This enormous lake must have been incredibly pure and perfect
Two hundred years in the past.
Those were hardy, trying days
For the people who lived beside it.
No machines to make life easier.
No electronic entertainment.

I’m hearing the strains of sweet music in my head,
At a down-home barn dance long ago.
Woven straw hats.
The smell of hay and a Mr. Greenjeans look-alike
Playing the fiddle and tapping his foot to the beat.

That was the equivalent of Internet dating,
Meeting a new beau to the sounds of bluegrass music
And the swelling aroma of sage.

Georgia O’Keefe liked to use pastel shades in her work.
Pinks and blues and yellows.
Emily Carr was more like Van Gogh.
Pulsing colours and swirling, vibrant hues.
O’Keefe’s paintings are calming and sexual.
Carr’s are passionate and in-your-face.
Wish I could afford to buy their masterpieces.

The cars whiz by on one side.
Lake Ontario sits laughing on the other.
It knows it’ll still be here long after I’m gone.
My ashes will be poured into its soothing liquid,
Just like my mother’s were.
Ashes to cigarette ashes, as Jackie B. says.
It’s time to continue my walk.