The long walk
for George*
The man on my spectrum
(where on my spectrum,
I can’t tell, it’s stretched so wide)
said: the walk we will take today,
(the sort of long walk we’d taken
every day of our long life), will be
longer than usual.
As I imagined: the passenger ferry
from the north shore to the downtown,
from there, stamping eastward,
block by shimmering block,
through every changing neighbourhood,
past every merging and diverging neighbour,
to the next city, then the next,
stopping only as we arrived
at the last station, where a train,
perhaps the last, would be waiting,
ready to bring us home.
Or we would venture out west
to the university,
wander the teeming campus,
sit on the old library steps,
look up at the clock tower,
then reach the ocean’s edge,
where islands big and small
can be seen meandering
like misshapen stepping stones
all the way to the horizon.
And along our route (if it were usual),
we would capture (time-stamped),
every ordinary sight that our path
impressed upon us: office buildings,
gas stations, the skyline,
another McDonalds, a sunset,
a row of newly-built townhomes.
And we just might send a text
(jpeg attached) to a contact
(let them know we're here),
one of many added to our phone,
many of whom we’ve never met
outside of social media, or we’d post
on the same social media an image,
say the ordinary gas station,
which everyone knew was there,
but no one had ever stopped to look at.
And since the man on my spectrum
had decided today’s walk would be longer,
longer than usual,
in fact, would reach beyond
the horizons of the day,
to the next city, then the next, and farther,
on to constellations of islands
and galaxies floating in the cosmic mist,
I thought he might finally show me
exactly where he’d always wanted to go
and just where on my spectrum
he could be found.
I wondered that,
and I still do.
*July 25th marks one year since my friend, George Michas, disappeared. He is still registered as a missing person by local police.
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Beautiful and touching. Thank you.
I so hope you're friend will be found, whole and hale.
Wonderful tribute. May his journey be free.