Heaven help the roses

For Pauline Davis, a.k.a. “the Peace Lady,” 1943–2017

Toronto knew her as the Peace Lady:

For hours she’d stand athwart an overpass

That spanned the Parkway through the Don’s ravine;

On Steeles, on Finch, on Lawrence, Eglinton.

She wore a white robe, her brown hand held high;

Two fingers telegraphing, simply, Peace.

When driving past we’d roll the windows down

And wave Peace back as Dad tapped on the horn.

At school we traded true Peace Lady facts:

She lived near the river, she kept raccoons.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, cold war scares raged.

In Sunday school, we read When the Wind Blows.

Our seventh-grade science teacher confessed

Where he’d wish to be if the bomb got dropped

On Toronto: “Directly beneath it.”

In English we read Wyndham’s Chrysalids.

On TV, Muppets sang “Can’t we be friends?”

Max Headroom unearthed radioactive waste

And several times a day the networks played

Emergency broadcasts, as grey and dark

As Reagan and Chernenko, null and void

As country roads shown in The Day After.

One night the evening news displayed how wide

A circle of fallout would spread in case

An ICBM struck the city’s core.

That circle’s edge—that emptied area code—

Engulfed our neighbourhood. Sleepless that night,

I lay and pictured houses on my street

Intact but vacant, windowless, and still,

All marred with carbon shadows, disused toys.

The air a thick green, toxic algae bloom,

Through which survivors shuffled, half melted,

Like plastic action figures burned by kids.

Through nervous years she graced our roads with peace,

A figurehead of hope on Toronto’s

Concrete prow; but when the millennium turned,

When cold war turned to market war, and we

Put movie studios in our pockets,

She feared they made her mission a new threat.

She was weaponized as mass distraction,

As drivers courted carnage in pursuit

Of perfect shots. So she stood down, gave up

The call for all to bid farewell to arms.

“The ‘state of emergency’ in which we

Live is not the exception but the rule,”

Warned Benjamin, through 1940’s storms.

I want the news to tell us Pauline won,

That she got a Nobel or the Order

Of Canada, or has been canonized.

Made statutory. Cast as stone icon

For all guerrilla artists to raise up

On all the city’s bridges and highways,

A figurehead to help us navigate

To any year but 1984:

A year whose end we’re all waiting for, still

As silhouettes burning to windowless walls.