IV: Winter at the Lake Mouth

IV: Winter at the Lake Mouth

Geese fly in formation
bare branches reveal the places
where hidden nests shelter nestlings
hawks perhaps or even squirrels.
I marvel at the enduring architecture
of these airborne homes.

The crisp air refreshes my lungs
cold, dried berries still hold
like a shell, a skeleton, clinging
to spindly winter branches.

The reeds of the marsh have been flattened
into patterns, shaped into swirls like crop circles –
maybe it’s us who are the aliens now.

Moving on from the marsh
the river begins to open up
– wind blows hard off the lake
water flows, so cold it becomes thick
becomes slush churning in the current.

On the side of the Gardiner bridge
someone has written, in huge lettering
(how did they get up there?):
Steam Deas? Wars! After Hours!?

I wonder if this is slang for something
I’m too unhip to understand.

To get to the lake I must pass under the bridge
I am afraid to enter further into this baffling
ominous, cacophonous human syntax, but
the open expanse of lake ahead
is a twinkling, frigid beacon, beckoning me
towards the unfrozen liquid horizon.

A train roars overhead.
The traffic grumbles on.

Yet, waves and water cheer me forward –
and just when I reach the darkest, most
claustrophobic spot of this murky, foreboding
underbridge world

I am greeted by images of children
massive portraits grace a series of grey cement pillars
heads and shoulders of somber, haunted – almost alien
monochromatic, post-apocalyptic progeny hold up this bridge.

They all look so sad and eerie and beautiful and spooky –
the solo boy and twin girls with their blunt, bobbed haircuts.

The middle girl faces forward – though her eyes are closed
she is the brave one. Her companions look down
shadowed with hopelessness.

I continue on –
the lake expanse beckons
and I evacuate the overpass cave.

Looking back at the bridges
steel icicles like teeth, point down
as if marking a gate, as if I have outmaneuvered
the sharp fanged jaws of some cunning, snarling dragon.

I turn and look forward
toward the alabaster arch
of the footbridge ahead of me
it glows with a solid, enduring beauty
and the sparse, simple architecture
of indestructible optimism.

The omnipotent God of the
transcendent, singing Oculus
has triumphed – once again.

To the left, the city spreads
glittering and glistening with light
and hope off on the water’s edge.

The CN tower says YES
points towards the sky
like an exclamation mark

and as I cross the bridge and head for home
the river performs like an orchestra of water
like a chorus of broken, syncopated ice and slush
returning all of us to a rushing unstoppable flow
out into the invigorating vastness
of lake Ontario.

From "If We Were All Rivers" by Andrea Thompson
Commissioned by Urbanvessel for riverMOUTH