Guelph is a sepia toned song
that echoes.
the place where God was Christ
clinging to the cross
and bleeding in my eyes;
Guelph is summer in my heart,
singing sunlight,
ripple-aired train tracks,
oily, empty cars for eager eyes;
dark sewers for rubber-booted seeking.
It is sweat and shaking sadness;
fumbling, frightened young hands
held together for fearless, first time;
hands that crept in basement’s dark,
reaching desperate beneath shirts,
seeking softer, warmer places
for healing from the corrosive
while wood panel walls looked on
at a new sacrament uncovered,
too much power for this fragile flesh.
Guelph is lost in my heart;
left-behind loneliness
in favour of far-flung places
with less flavor than her siren streets;
she is holy Ithaca on far
that cannot be found again
unless like lost Ulysses
I cast my aged body upon the sea
to sail and survive pointless peril
and find her gone, gone, gone.
Guelph: A Paean of Lament