Glitter on the horizon
Skyline silhouette under a golden sky
Beyond the great western harbour
I came here
Enthralled
Thirty-five years ago
Wide-eyed country boy
Glass and steel
In perfect lines
Rose above
The waters tread by commerce
The vast machine
Erecting towers
Trading commodities
Building economies
I could sit for hours
Admire the activities of humanity
Like the turning of the stars
Already twinkling in darkening sky
A vast universe
Of clockwork grace
The divinity of human hands
Creating our world from nothing
I saw the beauty
All of the beauty
Of what we wrought
Through the power of wanting
…and selling
Today I sit again
On this pier, thinking
Considering
The glitter of just one boat
And the helicopter
Resting on the pad
To whisk its owner
On some personal mission
We are
You and I
The stars of the galaxy
Circling around
The black hole at our center
Commanding our activity
Drawing us ever so slowly in
To our own oblivion
The black hole
Which appears to me now
As the silhouette
Of a boat tied to a pier
At the center of the universe
Where just a few of us
Acquire the resources
For their own personal means
Which could feed billions of us
The city
My beautiful city
Our beautiful city
Is not for us
The city is for them
We’ve built the engine
Which enriches them
And drains from us
Housing prices soar
Wages fall
Benefits diminish
Social nets dismantled
It is beautiful, still, our city
Exquisite and glorious
But less and less is it ours
And more and more is it theirs
All made plain
By one massive yacht
With a helicopter
Resting idly by the public market
The skyline glitter fades
Turns to dusk
The long night ensues
With hope for a new day
Vancouver Skyline
Burrard Inlet
From Lonsdale Quay
North Vancouver
British Columbia, Canada
On location for Motive, 2014