Ugly Week

For days I have been thinking about ugly week. I was 23 before I knew there was such a thing. Growing up on the wonderful Wet Coast I was oblivious to this blight. My first real winter was in the Interior but far, far out in the country so again - I didn't have a clue about ugly week.

One winter in the city in Ontario and I awakend to ugly week. To me it seemed like a month but it couldn't have been. All that lovely fluffy white snow accumulates over the winter. Grit is sprinkled on the roadways, litter is dropped, trash is spilled, garbage buried, pets eliminate and the streets elucidate tales of misdemeanors of a public and personal nature. It lays in wait layered on the roadsides and walks. Nasty, nasty, nasty! Sometimes a timely rain shifts the dust into shoals and leaves beds of sand in the gutters and at the road sides but other years it is fetid and dank and it lingers, slippery and sticky, to cling to rubber boots and grease the path of pedestrians.

Ancient History: Beyond the Hedge; Welcome Sounds

04/09/08

Welcome Sounds
Squirrels bounding on the rooftop at day break,
water running
running
running to the swollen river.
Crows cawing.
Gulls are calling
hackers hacking, piles of dirty snow
drip
drip
a snowblower running dry.
tap tap
tap tap
a flicker looking down and sees the clear spring sky

Ancient History: Beyond the Hedge

4/1/08
April
I have no desire to venture beyond the hedge today.
The sticky gate is blocked by four feet of tired dirty snow.
The coquette, Spring, plays with my winter weary heart.
Drizzle drips from the sky.
Diamond drips from linden branches and bird song beckons,
I resist. My boots are leaking.