China pictures

 Street meat vendors in Jinhua

 Solo fishing, Jinhua

 Shanghai

 Anniversary celebration at Jinhua Number One School

Live frogs for sale

Americano

Americano

Compressed by crowds

on a National holiday.

walking the Bund, like

a straight jacket,

stifles movement.

Infinite humanity

Along Nanjing Road

The only reprieve,

Escape to a cafe

to order an Americano.

Sit and watch the human

tide flow

like the dark Huangpu River

edging to the sea.

On a Fast Train from Shanghai

On a Fast Train From Shanghai

Tentative

a shy peak,

a finger between

the seat,

finally a quiet

“hello”

a giggle,

a young boy

breaks the cultural divide

makes contact with a 

“Big Nose”

from their perspective

we all look alike.

The train flies

on cement pillons

a hundred feet above

fields cultivated

twice yearly

by calloused peasant hands

on micro plots

paralleling a new

super highway.

Bill boards American style

boast unachievable consumer

goods viewed against

a dirty night sky.

Oblivious the little boy 

peaks over his seat.

Movie theatres then and now...

In Black and White

The quiet comfort of thick upholstered seats,

a cloistered feeling as lights dim,

ushers with flashlights held low escort late comers

to their seats,

the smell of hot buttered popcorn

in old downtown theatres with

balconies with racoco embellishments,

where tickets are sold from a large roll

by young girls in glassed in wickets

talking through small holes in partitions

causing patrons to bend low

and talk too loud,

then receive change dispensed into

a stainless steel bowl

embedded into the counter top.

The marquis displays one, sometimes two movies

to the street crowds:

“Storm Warning”

and

“The Damned Don’t Cry”

No Dolby sound check, Pano-vision, Techno Colour,

or subliminal seduction, 

before the movie fades to a Black and White

news reel narrated by a disembodied resonating voice

describing world events to a sheltered audience

shocking the world as they hear Hitler has invaded Poland,

tanks face off against cavalry, or the Korean War

begins in the simple world of then served up in Black and White.

Now. 

We walk to our seats on sticky floors coated with years of

soft beverages,

carpeted with super sized buttered popcorn

A giant sized fire breathing dragon in some

mythical Silver City

over sees the sale of thirteen dollar tickets

far away from my simple world of Black and White

with sub titles and a 

little

white

bouncing

ball.

Northern Forests

Etchings

Walking the long meandering trails

through the northern Spruce Forests

one moonlit winter eve,

I noticed upon looking up

the trees were all

at least ten degrees off centre.

Nothing grows straight

or

true

as life just doesn’t work that way.

The forest knows this lesson

and so I learned it too.

Bent branches only etch

what the winds allow them to.


Fort McMurray, Alberta

Canada for Sale!

Oh Canada!!

The Wheat Board sold to Saudi Investors,

Cirque d’Soleil,  went to the Chinese,

Tim Horton’s, a Brazilian Hedge fund...

Oh Canada!!

What have you done?

Getting Old

Timely Comparisons

At fifty-five my father was told

that he could not shovel snow any more,

turning 63 I have the same directive.

He smoked a harsh cigarette-Daily Mail

which he rolled himself from the age of 14.

I smoked at 14 to be cool and stopped somewhere 

in university because it no longer was.

He drank red wine a concoction that be brewed himself

using Niagara grapes from my uncle’s vine yard.

I drink Corona with lime on those summer days that I barbecue

He died at 79.