After I left Notre Dame I walked down to a deserted aquatic park. Here at the edge of the St Lawrence seaway I recognized one of the few sights I remembered from my road trip here in 1972. It was the geodesic dome visible across the water. When I first saw it it was a relatively recent hold-over from the Montreal Expo 67, a world's fair. Today it is an artifact of a lost civilization, a quaint relic of retro-futurist optimism.
I turned around and started back toward the skyline of the old town of Montreal. As I traced the deserted walkways toward its promise of warmth and food, I relished the metaphysical atmosphere alone in a precinct of ice.
A book-of-hours sky
frames the city’s old quarter
buoyant in cold air
A maze of ice pools
surrounds the palace of ice
eerie alone there
The Palace of Ice25 November 2005
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