sketchbook: Saturday 3 September 2011

SAT 3 SEP 2011 ca. 1:30 pm WILLIAM & GILMORE, BURNABY

An empty asphalt parking lot above and behind Kitchener Elementary School. A Canadian flag shimmies lazily by the steep shingle roof and bowler-hatted bell tower of the old-building part of the school. The profound sleep of summer vacation—the estivation at its deepest in these last days before the new school year.

A fresh breeze blows past Kimmie and me as we sit on this dry slope of yellowed grass. The yellow-poplar shivers over us. An airplane engine growls in tremolo overhead, filling the gap in the bustle of traffic on Gilmore Ave. The sky is big and blue. An unfamiliar and unexpected vista here, south and west: roughly flat, with conical evergreens standing amid roofs and from the green slope of a park. A sawtooth silhouette of tiny evergreens on the horizon, and faint blue humpbacks of distant Gulf Islands.

Clover trembles nearby.