worked

        One block west of University at Dundas is a narrow one way street sandwiched between two moderately tall buildings on the north side. Simcoe street is mostly resigned to long shadows but for a few moments in the day when natural light does manage to peer through.
        On the north-east corner of Simcoe and Dundas, the late summer sun glared down on an unconscious native sprawled over the raw metal criss-crossed heating grate. The way his legs and arms were slumped, this vagrant looked as though he belonged in an execution photo. Face plateau�d with bumps and bruises and a monstrous swelling the size of an egg just over the left brow; the tragic rummy�s flesh is like worked in leather.
        East of the grate is a building that is surrounded on three sides by University, Dundas and Simcoe where office and blue collar workers periodically step out on the subdued Simcoe side for a quick smoke. There, numerous drags and exhalations waft along with thoughts and conversations where a fleeting glance is cast to the unconscious native perhaps the topic of conversation.
        Exposed to the sun, sweat beads on a face marked with swellings, festerings and scars; the whole of the native�s head is uneven, brutalized by his lifestyle and society�s reaction to his lifestyle. Thick clumped black hair is tangled about the face and just brushes the grate. The swellings are so numerous and intense that his face is distorted as to resemble melting candle wax. On a body that could have been robust is a stained shirt layered with pavement dust, and denims layered with the same squalidness and worn to a tear and stringiness at the knees; then finally the worked over sneakers with the soles sanded by the ground.
        He is a child of the people from the distant frozen islands and ice caps, desolate plains and obscure disappearing forests, system slowed down and put under by urban emissions and concrete blankets. What is progressively happening to the earth is what has happened to the bodies and the sanctum sancti of the spirit. Just out of sight for the moving majority of the main flow of traffic that moves along Dundas.