four departments.

ink,
words, impressions, memories
on paper.
memories of a forgotten coast
lost to time, to leathery history.
my wild country who speaks in strange tongues.

the end of the earth, indeed.

my united kingdom,
well embraced by an eternal republic,
divided and broken, but still proud.
a symbol – always -
of the will of men
and of freedom.

each school teacher struck down
each general decree
each rugged crag and
each gentle valley
each soft-skinned lass and her dark-breasted knight
each smooth silver bullet rushing quietly o’er the plain
each salt flat, each cannery, each handful of buckwheat and barley

calls me back to you.

sunny sunday.

today, i was meant to go to the library
to work on some plan, far away,
of little significance to this
backwater paradise.

gleaming towers, rising elephantine on the
horizon, tiny city on the cliffs,
a hill of science a world apart
from the middle class and the
zombied, lost souls, bitter somnolence
dancing with mad conjecture.

to enjoy the warm hum of cinnamon
alongside coffee in a hardware store
with a mother, a sister, a wife
a confidante in sandals like mine.

new clothes fit for a prince or an
artist, far from that glowing
town, miles away from
the truths of sorrow
and hope,

distilled into ink and electrons.

here i am, disgruntled flâneur in
council assembled, hours later,
with the drunk, the scholar, the lover and the scorned,
fighting the baser urge to go
and do and live and become.

open skies and deadened streets are my canvas,

naked, mysterious and familiar.

i step, with long strides.
into night.
into wonder.
into song.

ironic cartography!

thanks, dawn mooney! i couldn’t have done it without your class!

this is the project of idle hands and too much caffeine

(i think that lonely planet should hire me to make maps.)

confidential to geog people: i forgot to squeeze “david ley” into kerrisdale. oops.