Boyle McCauley News

Since 1979 • April-May 2024 • Circulation 5000

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On Parole From Winter

A bank of black clouds
hovers off to the north.
Now and then a jagged flash
streaks to earth, too far away yet
for even a faint rumble
to reach Giovanni Caboto Park,
to alert adults in shorts and sandals
that all too soon this instant village
of toddlers, under 6s, schoolkids
of all colours, bright as rainbows,
will scatter at the first cold gust,
shriek and shield their eyes from grit
blown out of lanes and gullies,
half a year’s worth of traffic’s traction.

On this last Saturday of April,
the first weekend day of playground weather,
people who fled the sudden thunder
watch from kitchen shelters,
where they hid from six months of snow,
for the hail and rain and cold to pass,
for the next window between winters,
the next swing and soccer recess.

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