Waterscape
by Dean McKenzie
(a memory from Cafe le Gare, 1989, reading with Dean for the first time…)
In the rain mirror
the city is downside-up.
The silvery splash of mist drops
in a cloud of grey:
sheets of glazed pavement
reflect the urban vertical.
Two distant points vanish:
one is invisible above my head.
All the mist hides it–the rain source–
a pinnacle of ultimate wet
at the zenith.
It spits its nickel-silver life-breath stream
down down down…
Down to the pavement that holds it flat.
Splash concentric waves
micro-duplicate tsunami
yet hold flat–
MIrroring glass-concrete-people
and splashes their reflections
down, down
down to a nadir of light-warp
Far beneath my feet.
Down to a
Second vanishing point at
the darkest edge of vision–
surreal–
Yet my eye beholds the invert
as far less wearying
than the grey wet figures of
virtual image above water-ground.
There, in glass, concrete, steel, pavement
human motion ceases
and all is waterfall to create mirror.
If I squint as I stare straight down
I see myself at the
very bottom of this rainscape.
The Legend lives on. Easily, still, the best male poet-performer Edmonton’s ever had.