Bartlett

Crossing a bridge in Parry Sound
could be like crossing a bridge in Riga –

waters dark and gloomy, mirror slick in hour past midnight
like polished onyx or liquid mercury;
black, low-ceilinged sky, the street lights yellow-orange
glow at either end of the bridge.

Septuagenarian and octogenarian spies in dark Burberry trenchcoats
shuffling slowly out onto the bridge on old worn thin shoe soles
to some undefined rendezvous with some other old shuffling spy.
I walk on by with my backpack…