I tramped my early days
on Kingsway roads
with Royals’ names for streets,
signed with anglo city signatures.
I grew among the Humber flow,
a ravine side scrambler, adventurer,
salamander hunter,
clamberer of my dangerous heights,
now but shoulder high,
the distance of a hoist and hug.
I tramped along in unlocked time
to pass our open doors and linger
for the breadman’s basket at the back
or the milkman’s bottles, thick cream on top,
the front door flung open,
the delivery calls : Timothy’s!1
Pushed and pulled, opened up
The world came in – my world went out.
Before doors were locked behind.
I tramped among the horse clops’ end
among bridled wagons,
their demise delayed by metal gulping war,
their sounds changed soon to power’s noise,
and cars came home
packed and wrapped by glory chrome
that bragged by curves and glint,
and gathered neighbors homage round
to greet the new, and speak as
experts of specs and speed and style.
I tramped among unknown voices
from other places pouring on our grid,
tastes and smells,
with sounds and changes
charged to leave behind
my own English Irish city’s start
to become this now boundless blended flow,
out from streets of new arrival
churning in our city’s currents’ daily tides.
I am a tramp,
wearing ragged jagged time
to rummage the past in present,
finding changes feared
have wrought all the difference
that makes us all the same,
in Toronto huge in my drifting days,
coloured, touched and made
from universal unbounded multi-coloured rays
in fond and unexpected ways.
1. “Timothy’s” would be called out by the Eatons Department Store delivery man after opening the unlocked front door and leaving a package in the foyer.