A Saturday Afternoon Downtown

I wrote a poem about going downtown with my Auntie Mable, the poem was published in A Private Mythology (Ekstasis Editions, 2015). 

Downtown Montreal, around 1955; Morgan's in the background, 
Christ Church Cathedral behind the streetcar on the left

A Saturday Afternoon

 

Outside the main doors

of Morgan’s Department Store

facing Phillip’s Square, an organ grinder

played music that Saturday afternoon downtown

with Aunt Mable. I was a child in the late 1950s

with my aunt, walking beside her, window shopping, 

eating turkey and mashed potato dinner

at Woolworth’s basement lunch counter

then buying pastries upstairs as we left to walk along             

Ste. Catherine Street. You could list the beggars you

saw in Montreal back then, the woman with one

shoe off, the shoe hidden behind her,

and the chauffeur-driven black car

that would pick her up,

or so we heard… or the old woman,

scarf tied under her chin

and the tin can of yellow pencils she sold.

Then, Eaton’s, Simpson’s and Morgan’s

were the big department stores,

now it's boutiques, restaurants, crowded streets,

strip joints and bright lights.