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In the cafeteria, six floors up,
people with trays looking for a quiet spot--
I sit in a river of holiday--
music, lights, petite poinsettias
on tables. It's been a long day,
murmur of voices, women with friends,
one in a nice velvet hat sliding
a poinsettia into her shopping bag--
others, men and women,
I see them, some alone, staring inward,
thinking perhaps of what's in the fridge,
what's for supper--
To my left, through tall old-fashioned windows,
the tops of things,
high-rises breasting the clouds, cathedral spires--
I imagine them waving to us
doing a kind of hula
up there, above the traffic--
while inside, the Hallelujah Chorus,
Handel's triumphant shout reduced
to a background ripple--and I'm liking it,
my hands cupping a mug of hot tea,
December sun low in the south,
the mind swimming a slow lazy swim along the surface,
and I'm upstairs alone in a house full of people,
outside it's bitterly cold and I'm facing the sun-porch
whose doors I've opened, allowing
the freezing air, letting it pour over me
and the sun too, shooting gold in my eyes
and onto the wall, on the picture there,
man, canoe, a dark moonlit stream.
Mom tracks me down, closes doors,
scolds for wasting heat
and that's that. All this, like finding a pebble
in your pack. You can't remember saving it--or why
and there I am, wanting somehow to pocket this
stolen hour in the Bay cafeteria--
If I go there again, it will not be the same.
Barbara Wild is from Montreal originally and has since lived in Southwest
Ontario, Saskatchewan, and is now a resident of Vancouver, where you can
find her most mornings with pen and paper in the car at Trout Lake.
Have comments you'd like to send the author? Please e-mail Barbara Wild
at: bwild@interchange.ubc.ca or fill out the form
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