Blue like Mary's cloak

I bounce out for my walk, my
doctor recommends a quiet
daily walk, but youknow
summer brings the smog
and winter the cold and ice
and snow and rain and bitter
cold to Toronto by the lake

but, for Glory's sake, walk,
says the dietician, even if it's
just to the mall where you do
your inconvenience shopping

so I walk into the sunny day
facing westward along the block
a long block to Gerrard Square
and Basic Foods, facing and
peering as I walk, squinting
down the street toward the
bridge over the river Don.
skimping its way between
the Don Valley ravine and the
out-of-site Don Valley
Expressway alongside the
the sad sham of a dead
rivulet of unclean water,
paralalleing a moving
traffic jam full of steaming
crumping slowing queuing
cars and crashbump trucks
thump steaming polluming
fuming up the smoke of
the greyness and the "shortness
of breath," as its called,
fortunately I take my
psychotropics every morning
as prescribed and the westward
watch of the dank downtown,
the darkening downtown half
of which is underground in
vast clean-air malls comfortably
temp'rachoor-controlled, like
the tunnels under Baghdad -
they could have malls down there,
over there, some- body please
tell them, maybe Toronto's could
move there, somewhere, any-
where but here, because their
habitues don't care about
surface air to which we surface
class are condemned, unless
you have a car or truck or
bus or plane, then you can
have mobile air-conditioning
inside and pollute the outside
air at the same time, it's called
diverity...

because the way it is we'll
never get the city free of this
dome of unbreathable chemo-
air that darkens the sky
toward the downtown, but
out here just over the Don
and a some blocks eastward
on Gerrard Street if I look
directly up today I can see
blue sky, I mean deep gorgeous
blue sky with no tint of black
subtextual pollute, I'm not
depressed, I'm breathing, and
I'm seeing a real ungreyed
blue sky for all at the mall
today...

On my way home, I look east-
ward toward Jones and beyond
out toward Little India, and the
sky is so blue, real Virgin Mary
blue, not like the statuettes
for the mantle-piece that pale
the blue down to a mockery,
not the blue of the Virgins set
on the window-sill so paled,
but the deep maternal blue of
the holy apparitions of God's
human mother wearing her
finest deep-blue cloak and
white open head-covering
against Palestine and Gerrard
street heat, and seeing the
white cloudlets so clean and
brite and lamb-like dotting the
serenity of the blue sky, on
this day walking home, aware
of all my quotidian saints -
the doctor at 410 Sherbourne,
the dietician there, and so
many more, I continue my
bounce back along Gerrard to
Galt up to the 40 Maximum
Speed sign, as I turn into the
alley and find my way to the
backyard gate, which is the
front door for the tenets, tru
the petite piazza with the
edge-garden along its three
perimeters 'cept the gateway
up the steps and into the house
and my monastic cell with the
big window facing out to the
backyard ... where quickly I get
off my feet ....