Ode to Seasons in Central Park

Tanning banana shorts and aviator glasses

observe beggar’s carts. Kite strings

attached to little hands with balloon painted

rosy cheeks, wave handkerchiefs in the solstice.

The path is gone, the wanderlust, the vagrant and the laundry.

Amidst the vacant stares the stars burst, a healthy paradox.

In the summer swelter, they found love at the closing sun,

underneath the blanket.

The bow is tied to sepia toned stretching limbs,

holding each plank up across the Mallards

dunking heads. Leaves crumpled and crushed blow

past the fence in the schoolyard.  Streams drizzle

on cool wet Ipe, Magnolia and Cedar wood.

Bacteria and garbage are washed

underneath the bridge, where they

biked on the tandem all last August.

Balto nobly poised in bronze, spies

Alaskan Turnpike submerged in ice while

chasing sheep skin moccasins with sober eyes,

past figure skates and sleds. The boy scouts are little men-

no more climbing up the slide. Underneath the davenport,

the lost are deciding on the frozen lie, we will remember them.

Yoshino cherry blossom festivals drop shores of offspring.

The pink and white star twists erode a passage

of trilobites. The bourgeois awaken and resurface.

The horse drawn carriages, weddings and

proms are resurrected. We are American-

all of us.

Strawberry Lennon fermented grass hold

hippies celebrating the dead, while gardens bloom again.

Beating drums and operas accolade merchants and

Ugly Ducking Story Time at 4 p.m. where perambulators

and pitter-patter guests are fog town silhouettes

sewn in between the gaps and hedges of

of tree lined concrete, subways and bricks.

We all joined hands across the neighborhood. 

By Christina Beach