Portage is a travel word, voyageurs did it, most drive instead, the pavement bumbles then smoothed rocks, smacked with tire rubber pieced together like fields of canola, a checkerboard, a quilt, worn where the wheels left their trail, that every Winnipegger and many others had pounded this path, through twisting lanes, and flat fairways, amidst assorted restaurants and big box stores, and apartment complexes, and parks, and a graveyard, and the trees made out of pipes that fed on the electricity of the streets, and lights as fruit that ripen in the Christmas season, and the cars dance and swerve amidst a flurry of snow flakes, melting the crystals from the sky in a mad dash to get 600 000 to work on time, while a Hydro building baby or young girl looks over the rapids, the traffic lights flicker a disco ambiance amidst the floating specs and the vehicular mating and the old man dancing to stay warm, while he goes to the bank in Polo Park, and the air thickens as the temperature declines, and two old ladies murmur to the breeze as they reminisce about a summer conveniently devoid of mosquitoes, while Mr. Fronda from El Salvador, sees snow for the first time at the ripe age of 45, and a young husky dog runs ahead of a young boy whose Grandma left the reserve to find work about a month or so ago, and the ground sags as the snow scraper enters the playground, and parts the frozen seas, to clean out the guts, as the city’s bloodline ebbs and flows to Main Street and the forks and then back out to the capillaries, the perimeter, and beyond, off into the setting sun over the flat prairie, but then coming back to the perimeter wall, where the blood runs deep and the gate stays open and the metal guard rail blocks all exits save the correct ramp and you have to be able to read the signs and follow the widening run-off that leads back down the channel, and floats back towards the mountains that beckon from the center, the glass reflecting on their phallic rise like arms reaching for the sky, but cut off ultimately for lack of funds, or lack of dreams, or lack of the infinite, and the towers beseech each other across the rapid rivers of stone, close to their co-workers but always out of reach, save for the occasional walkway that breaks through the lower sky, near the base, and they stand tall amidst the competition, and the raging roads, and the inevitable emptiness, and their eventual erosion, or destruction, to make a new arena, that will make a new mall, and enter a new world, as the lights flicker further to a Wolseley that’s wearing the cloth of former glory, the road of Valour where now a drunken unemployed man kills his wife and himself and the Free Press the Sun as they look to why, and they circle the streets, desperate for the underground to give up the secrets that riddle the underbelly and wreak pain and remorse upon an impoverished community as they come off Broadway to meet it, the blizzard has encased the city at 5:36 pm, where the routine runs forward as the walls of ice blow or melt away, leaving small pristine mountains on the floodplain (the minerals from Lake Winnipeg) and become browned with gravel from the plow, the loose brown stones separated from those blackened with tar, and the University of Winnipeg scholars buy the homes of the urban poor, and somewhere someone stands with a cardboard sign, half-eaten and half-missing, and written upside down, and holds outs his hand, if they have one, with a can or an old Jets hat or with a shirt that says Red Lake District Champs on a jacket pocket on a puffy winter coat, that long forgot its sport of victory, and that loses feathers in the blizzard that are white like the snow and so blend-in, and they came from Value Village, but it is not known where they were before, and streets continue to beat out the heart rhythm as the city stumbles on, and the Golden Boy looks over the wanton night ladies below, and the malls glow effervescent, despite a close at 9:00 pm, and there’s an Uptown or an Exclaim magazine taking flight in the urban breeze to spread its wings and fly through the storm, against the wind, and seeking shelter in a forgotten enclave, on to the bridge, be it over, under, over the other veins that circle ‘round, and through the billboards and street vendors a lone orange Transit Tom strolls in from the west, number 21 express, en route to the downtown, on Portage Avenue, where an answer waits at a midtown stop, but it doesn’t have a pass.