Farewell to Julie Roorda

Julie Roorda

With this issue, our assistant editor Julie Roorda leaves the Surgical Spotlight. She has contributed exceptional intelligence, humour and good judgement to the department for the past nine years. Julie has published two books of poetry and two of fiction while working half-time with us. She recently received a grant from the Toronto Arts Council to write another novel and launch her career as a full-time author. Richard Reznick, Bryce Taylor and I, along with the department members and staff thank Julie and wish her well in her career. Ed.

DUNDAS STREET BRIDGE

I was crossing the Dundas Street bridge
at an alchemical moment of zero
that slicked the gritty concrete below
my feet and I nearly slid over the edge.

I latched to the guardrail while the roar
of heavy streetcars shook the road
and the six o'clock Go-train ferried its load
of commuters to their bedrooms in Aurora.

The riders were immune to the needles of twilight
Shooting pink dye through veins of the old
papery skin of snow. And just as the cold
Conjures invisible breath to sight,

The half-light luminized the flux beneath
the surface of steady brick warehouses,
colour of dried blood, a flow rousing
new buds of rust on the remaining teeth

of broken trucks and machinery in a fenced
lot. They bloomed while I watched;
the growth of hibernation hatched
in that moment between now and the present.

Julie Roorda
From "Eleventh Toe",
Guernica, 2001