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The Winter on Carleton Street is Cold

The church looks like a great Queen
crowned and standing tall
from the far end of Germain,
and if you allow your imagination
to go where it should,
her elaborate pannier billows bulbously from the midriff down.

The elms, ashes, and lindens
can be seen lining the rolled-out carpet
that leads down Germain,
did I mention down?,
and further down,
all the way to the ocean
like wistful sentient soldiers,
melancholic, aware of their duty
and the high proud risks.

This sentimental dream
of well-placed architectural design
mixed with rich spiritual tones
still holds sway,
more than one might think,
but certainly less than it once did;
the Queen having been forced to her knees
by a grave humility and reckoning;
but despite this necessary reckoning, many things have not improved.

The recasting of garbs or shapes of buildings
or normalized rituals have not been enough
to scatter a new kind of sovereignty.
A shadow has sidled up next to hope in Saint John in recent decades,
where the sweetest wild flowers grow,
and the winter streets grow cold.
A crazed tone has been set,
and the coldness of its grip
has stung the arm of many a human,
stung so fiercely it resembles a burning fire –
and for some, this fire burns for their entire existence.

And yet light also remains.

Carleton leads to Coburg,
and Coburg leads down Peter to Waterloo.
And Waterloo leads past the Cathedral,
and still a light remains.

Even in the metaphorical pit
we can choose to use the afterglow
of the long lingering flames
to pick out semblances of faces we once knew,
movements that resemble souls,
not lost, not without hope,
as even in their very real current circumstances a light remains.

And it would seem the steeples in the area,
Stone and Cathedral and St John and others,
though far from perfect,
have not entirely lost their glow.
A beatific light still cascades down
from them as if Beatrice herself dangled the old rope of love.
And so a responsibility to bring recognition
to these souls through her vision
presses on. To step in, as Dante once did
many centuries ago,
and remember that what fading shapes we see
are meant to be pitied,
not a monetized condescending pity that only leads to more shadows –
a pity that says, ironically, as if talking to sin and not flesh and blood,
‘I’m glad I’m not you, disgusting,’ –
but a pity that resembles hope and compassion and,
most importantly, the light of the world, Reason.

A pity that inspires a vision of this light
can change the very aura of any hell.
We are all, no matter lovely sector
or beautiful religion or gorgeous personal belief,
responsible for providing this kind of pity.
It is the only future that can assist in Being.