Vancouver Sunday
Posted: Monday, August 08, 2011
by John Rice
canadianwriter
I caught my first glimpse of that beautiful city by the sea on a mid-April Sunday. My great journey into the unknown had brought me far from my northern Ontario homeland, still clutched fast by winter’s chill hand, brought me through the Canadian Shield, over pancake flat prairie land, through passes surrounded by rugged snow peaked mountains, along the Fraser River Valley, past Hell’s Gate and into summer.
The sweet music of bells form churches, from cathedrals peeling throughout the city, echoing back from towering mountains, with jagged peaks clad in snow, greeted me when I stepped off that greyhound into my new life. I think it was at that moment I fell in love with Vancouver, and fore ever after, when I hear bells ringing out, calling the faithful to worship, I am transported back to not only to my first, but all of my Vancouver Sundays. I have tried to put my feelings about those special days into the following poem.
Beautiful city
girded by mountains,
your soft sandy shores
brushed by the sea.
Church bells ringing,
echo back
from snow hatted mountains.
Sunday blankets you
deep with its grace.
I look down
from my perch
high on Grouse Mountain.
down through wispy white clouds,
sailing over your beautiful face.
Stanley Park,
sparkling emerald green
in the distance,
beckons me down
from my towering place.
I leave my eyrie,
descend from the mountains,
journey once more
across Lions Gate.
I wonder through wild woods,
stay in their fastness.
Birds sweetly singing
brighten my mind,
and all of my worries erase.
Time flows
like water, from
a spring on the mountains.
English Bay
sparkles with
frothy foaming waves.
Boats, with sails
coloured like a rainbow,
prance across the water,
dance towards me.
The face of the sun
touches the ocean,
setting a great fire over the sea.
I linger until
the final fingers
of flickering flames
ebb away on the tide,
linger long after
a haunting, melancholy
loon call, fades on the wind.
With regret I turn away
from fairyland enchantment.
My mind fills with wonder
of this Vancouver Sunday,
as I walk east on Hastings.
http://quillandblood.wordpress.com
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