For Vancouver.

In this city, there are no stars; no
points of light or reason, no
song to hang above our heads, no
brightness pierces through this silent shroud of night, no
reminder of the hopelessly ineveitable.
We see only the dark blood of yesterday's dead dawn
bleeding black as midnight, blocking out the sun.

In this city, the winter is violent and long; no
grass remains alongside the sidewalk to redeem this weather, no
women or child can hide herself from the mercyless rain, no
break in the clouds no,
warm, rebellious ray of stray sunlight finds the cold,
angry homeless people, hiding from a grey sky under blue tarps,
while small children watch the glass jars on their verandas
collect the constant tears of Demeter for Persephone.

In our city, though the darkness blinds us,
we remember we never needed eyesight, anyway
but our faith is in the fact that the stars exist and
we live as though the night lay divided before us,
like the red sea or the crowds on the way to Golgotha.

We believe, you
are our home, and the stars that guide us there; you
are the crisis of springtime, that erupts in the midst of a sky-darkened season; you
are the only reason we know the sun will rise again; you
watch the rain run through the cracks in the sidewalk, watering future daisies; you
pull our mud-soaked hearts from the city and you
set them above the dull, reaching expanse of city skyline. And we
watch, with wonder, the beauty of the ineveitable sunrise.