I turned the clock back today, chasing the ghosts of light,
As Ontario’s summer whispers through the maple trees.
Born in the mid-fifties, when the world felt wide and bright,
I am a traveler now, anchored by memories across the seas.
While some still drift in the moon’s silvered night,
Life surges forward, ignoring our pleas,
A relentless tide, a morning's grey flight,
Carrying the weight of a century’s decrees.

What has become of the spirit that marks its own trace?
No longer the cavalry, nor the blade’s sharp refrain;
Now silent drones haunt the clouds, void of a face,
Killing by wire, bringing distance to pain.
Poetry withers in this frantic, cold race,
For the harshness of living leaves a bitter stain.
The poets are few, lost in the hollowed-out space
Of a world that finds beauty too hard to sustain.

Tethered to screens, we are islands of blue glare,
The neighbor is a stranger, the park just a scene.
Sunday’s soft laughter has vanished in air,
Swallowed by shadows of what might have been.
From my immigrant heart, a lingering prayer:
I have lived through the golden, the grey, and the mean.
Is there hope in this future, so stark and so bare?
Perhaps... if we look past the glass, to the green.

Dedicated to all those who, day after day, make the world a better place.