This city sits on a fat lip of fertile earth
scraped off the ancient shield rock to the north by the last ice age. The
receding glaciers leaving behind water, earth and a changed landscape. Our
Great Lakes formed by time and forces the scale or which we cannot fathom
except in dreams now anchor life to its shores.
This place is ancient but this city is young.
It is stone, steel, and glass rising up among the rolling hills and up from the
valleys. We have buried hundreds of small tributaries that used to lead down to
the lake and paved them over so that only a careful eye can tell where they
once ran. We have dig deep into the soft layers of earth to find foundations
for the skyscrapers that mold the skyline. All the displaced earth made into a
protective spit. The spit protects the harbour from winter storms and provides
sanctuary for migrating birds having to cross the expanse of the lake. We have
formed this place as much as it forms us. We are the new glaciers - moving land
and water - only we work much faster.
In the heart of the city we have blotted the
sun and shrunk the sky to blue strips between buildings. It isn’t until you
leave downtown and get up onto the shoulders of the land, in the suburbs that
ring the city, where you can see big sky.
To the northeast, on a bald head of a street
corner the sky is a grand expanse. Here, the world feels tall and wide.
Distance has turned downtown into grey - blue Legoscape sitting in a hollow of
land between the last two rivers, the Humber and the Don. You can see a
horizon and imagine what may lie beyond it. Moving clouds, rippled like the
roof of a dogs mouth, scatter the sun's dying rays as it slips below the
western edge of sight.
Streetlights come on as the wind kicks up cold
again. There will be an exodus of cars and trains as people make their way home
from work. And the city sighs it's way into a winter night.
Just me.
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