Toronto Tramp

I tramped my early time
in Kingsway roads so said by
names of kings and queens and princes,
grown among the Humber flow,
ravine side scrambler, adventurer,
salamander hunter,
clamberer of my dangerous heights,
now but a shoulder high,
a distance to hoist and hug.

I tramped along the unlocked time
to pass the open doors and linger
for the bread man’s basket at the back,
for the laundry strung by patterns placed,
for the milk man’s bottles, thick cream on top,
for the front flung open, the delivery calls.
The world came in – my world went out.
Now doors there are to touch,
but just by keys, to close behind.

I tramped with the horse clomp’s end
of wagons pulled, by finished war delayed,
the sound made soon to power’s noise,
packed and wrapped by glory chrome
that bragged by curves and glint
and gathered neighbors homage round
to greet the new, and speak
expert each of specs and speed and style.
Now good sense is seen as best
with regretted loss of innocence.

I tramped among the unknown voices
of other places poured upon our grid,
their tastes and smells combined,
their soundings sensed around,
of changes charged to leave behind
my own English Irish city’s start to be
this now boundless blended flow,
from streets of new arrival
drifting in our current’s daily tide
that casts us all in chorus by Ontario’s side,
now making other cities strange,
where no faces but like my own arise.

I am a tramp,
wearing ragged jagged time
to rummage places where past is present,
finding changes my forbears feared
have wrought alive my love
of all the difference that makes us same
in this city huged in my drifting days,
coloured, touched and made
from universal unbounded rays
in fond and unexpected ways.