Instructing Mad Infants
by Brett Seemann

In the empty lots where bagmen lie
side by side with the she-wolves,
blowing smoke in the eyes
of all those billion stars,
that's where you'll find her
at close of day.

When the hotdog vendors
wheel their stands
through the dirty yellow shadows of George Street
in a greasy dawn,
she'll have been up for hours,
wading through the shallows
af all the lives she encounters;
tracing tributaries for the pigeons to follow
from out the broken-down tenement of night.

The train tracks with their diesels
are her brothers,
the old trestles of the bridges
her sisters
dancing in gowns of weed and silt.

But most truly, she is a mother
answering no child but the city,
which feeds off her breasts,
sucks vicarious life
from her little lips,
just like the cigarette smoke she puts away
during her all night walkabouts.

She knows this mad infant of a city,
cannot live
but through the soles of feet
walking its streets.
The city hears nothing
except footfalls
and speaks in a language of heel-toe;
only seening its reflection
when we choose to stare it down.

Long ago she accepted herself
as a tool of its learning.

Prince George, BC -- May 4/2001