The Good

 

Somewhere inside the house I can hear
Blue skies, nothing but blue skies
Playing on a radio
As rain pours down and wind whips the trees
The incongruity of those words
Makes me smile for some reason
And I stare out the window at the wet and windswept way
That rain will clean Toronto’s good streets at least
Wiping away all the blood spilled every year at this time
The simple beatings
The bank robberies
The stabbings and shooting deaths of innocents
The worst it seems so far,
The knifing and tossing of your pregnant wife
From a balcony twenty one stories high
Taking her life and your own progeny’s
And jumping from the same yourself
To escape some kind of justice
If there is any in the good city to fit
A crime as vile as that
But soon there will be a blanket of white
And those blue skies to cover it all up in a wrapping
Of beauty and speckless cleanliness
For there is goodness in the good city
The forty five grand given back to people
Who’ve forgotten their Christmas cash
At a restaurant of all places
For everyone needs
That much cash for Christmas
Even the guilty giving of a single present
To the children
Of the poor who need food
Or the happy greetings in the streets
Not meant but at least said
This time of year
In the city so good
That we named it so
Blue skies, nothing but blue skies
For some strange reason I think it’s a good thing
That I’ve somehow forgotten the rest of the words