It’s Sunday morning on 112 Avenue

And we’re on our way to Church

We pass a teenage girl

Listening to her iPod and dancing in a bus shelter

It’s a silent pantomime of song, which only she hears

With her eyes closed and hands moving

I watch and inhale the beat.

God is looking on

Me, in my starched collar

She, in her mini skirt, dancing

My Sunday morning singer

God’s child.

Last Tuesday, I attended the Annual Alberta Avenue Community League meeting and met some new people. One was involved with Arts on the Ave ( I was invited to their next meeting); the other two were a young couple, who had just moved into the Alberta Avenue area. It was so good meeting them. On the way home, I was thinking about the concept of new friends and came up with this poem.

New Friends

This is a red-letter day for me

I speak of friends in melody

This chorus of impunity, now sung amid community.

The robins and I battle it out

” New friends !” within my heart I shout

” New friends” – the echo finds us out

As joy within a tear.