SECRET MENU > POETRY
When I worked for The City
a lifetime ago, I was in the
Horticulture Department. Planted
and tended flowers at City Hall,
Crary Park, Victoria Park, The
Peterborough Municipal Airport,
Confederation Park, and various
planter boxes around the downtown
parking areas, little islands of tranquil colour
in otherwise drab and dreary locales. One
beautiful and sunny spring day in May,
me and Ellie were at the Chambers Lot.
A lady comes up to us and asked what
we were planting. I replied that these were
Magic Flowers. Her curiosity was piqued.
What are Magic Flowers? she asked. Well, I
replied, today they are petunias and cosmos.
By next week, they’ll have turned into
broken beer bottles and cigarette butts. She humphed
a deep exhalation of air, said nothing more
then turned and slumped away. Ellie rolled her
eyes and said stop it. I smiled and laughed softly.
The City no longer plants flowers in the
Chambers Lot in downtown Peterborough.
Deryck N. Robertson lives and creates in Peterborough/Nogojiwanong, ON where he is an elementary educator. He has done temp office data entry, worked in a warehouse picking, packing, and shipping books, has been a custodian of a church, worked an assembly line, delivered medicine to seniors’ homes, tended roadside trees, planted thousands of flowers, and has tried to inspire intermediate students for 27 years. Recent publications include The Hooghly Review, Epistemic Literary, and DarkWinter Lit. He has a couple of songs on Spotify and is often found in a canoe in Algonquin Park or drinking maple roast coffee around a campfire. He is the EIC of Paddler Press and can be found online @Canoe_Ideas and deryck.ca.