"Let's remember Adam," suggested a billboard
By the side of the King's Highway, later to become
Chemin du Roy, complete with the school photo
Of a tow-headed gradeschooler over a warning
To always watch out for stopped school busses.
The real Adam, evidently, had been struck and killed
By an inattentive highway driver. His smile beamed
Across a lily pond dotted white with blossoms
And above another sign warning of moose crossings.
A light fog wrapped itself around the scene,
But then I was gone on down the road. Past
Sunset, after a showery twilight, I arrived
In Quebec City, the leafy streets with big houses
Still mildly, fragrantly damp, the old town
With narrow streets, doing its colonial best
To pass for European, and the young adults
Out for a Friday night at the restaurants
And bars, laughing. I drove slowly through them
Winding my way home where I never belonged,
Wondering how a creator could have been content
To deliver death to to the creator's own child
And to that child's children, in perpetuity, down
To this generation that wandered the streets looking
For a good time, a good life before death, when it was life
Who was god and who had delivered them unto death.
Old, old serpent me, you see, just trying to remember Adam.
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