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 About a week and a half ago, I posted a poem by a Croatia poet Slavko Mihalić. I don’t write poetry, but I do like poetry, so I will try to post some on a semi-regular basis. Poetry and photography are perfect companions because they both demand that you pause and look beyond the obvious. The following poem was actually written by my significant other some time ago. As I was going through yesterday's roll of Holga shots, it seemed like a perfect companion to this photo of Pitt Stop - corner store across the street and down the block. It’s published with her permission. Spring Comes Pitt street organizes citizens into brigades – gets tangled with the morning news alongside stabbings or murders or stories denouncing politicians who haven’t done enough to ‘clean it up’. Gentrify Is the word preferred by the people a few blocks down, where the houses are carefully painted and the lawns bare of decaying coffee cups, each rim carefully rolled. Gentrify they say. But they never say where they want the rest of us to go. Sure – there’s that gang of giant leather-loving men who make thunderous parades of their motorcycles and just last year stripped the grass from the lawn, replaced it with packed dirt, installed a flapping orange tarp for shade. (they support the NDP, don’t you know) Still Pitt street is my street and I feel easier here than in the suburbs where people will only stab you when no one is looking. Not many trees in this end of town hardly any green at all really, everything’s grey, grey and concrete but just down the hill’s a small yard. come summer a maple reaches over the sidewalk, a trembling green veil I often stop, turn my face to the bits of sky that peer at me through the mottled mass of branches and broad quivering leaves. Tree isn’t green right now. Nothing is. Buds haven’t even begun to swell the wind’s still cold, snow melted, nothing but salt and gravel and dog shit careful where you walk Yet Down past that tree, there in the brown yard, behind the yellowing bits of plastic and strips of cardboard, down by a couple of struggling bushes bursts a shock of colour. Green purple yellow white. Crocuses aren’t they? First flowers of spring – read that somewhere, must have, otherwise how would I guess? couldn’t remember the last time I saw flowers in this brittle end of town just growing for the luxury of it as far as I could see for no good reason at all. Michelle Porter, 2006 | |
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Posted by Bojan Archived under: Saint John, NB, South End, Corner stores |
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