Parks & Benches I

Somewhere beyond this quiet park's    
grassy chest and solid arms    
is a poet of impeccable taste    
leaving profoundly beautiful    
volumes of verse    
in the little library    
beside the bench.    
     
I carefully fish them out,    
open them as letters    
from the front line      
of some war declared    
on foreign soil      
deemed necessary    
for freedom by beaurocrats    
whose own sons and daughters    
attend ivy league schools,    
members of rowing and lacrosse      
teams on Saturday morning.    
     
Each page of multifaceted gems    
is etched in a hopelessly romantic    
language archived without Ariadne's thread    
by a younger generation      
eschewing tradition for convenience,    
bridging the emptiness of space      
with type and enter keys.    
     
I must admit myself,      
for the sake of honesty      
as well as approachability    
(not to mention accountability),    
that I, too, have surrendered to such    
when faced with a lack of alternative    
around a functioning marriage bed,    
turning away from the resemblance    
to a cheap hotel room of dishonesty    
with blinking red flags of neon      
flashing NO VACANCY    
through the uncleaned glass.    
And, while I harbour no regret    
for choices of the past,    
nor bitter resentment  
over the dealt cards of this life,  
it is, nevertheless,  incomparable      
to the nature of sumi ink      
on a dipped bamboo tip    
spreading across the silk    
parchment of pressed hemp    
permeating oil and memory    
from between the smooth skin    
of evening linens ensuing    
sun-baked lavender baths.    
     
Dreams are beautiful things,    
and visions sustain separated lovers    
through circumstantial distance    
filled with the choices of life.      
Yet, the tangible manifests    
through the reality of each      
aging moment passing    
as a peddler through the city.    
It's littered about the lawn      
as deceased months discarded      
from the kitchen calendar      
of empty promises, sonnets,    
and mailboxes checked too often.    
     
This bench, these books,      
ingesting each word      
of their mamed survival      
from the ditches    
of technology is reality.      
Praying the war will end    
and the soldier,      
whomever he is,      
will round the corner      
of the walking track      
in his dusty uniform      
and bulging knapsack    
of combat gear      
he'll never need again -    
his arms loaded      
with the books left for him,    
notes tucked in between      
pages of verse    
like care packages      
from home, containing      
a sunlit aroma of Love    
arriving in a muddy trench    
amid a senseless war      
from a tiny annexed library    
beside a park bench.    
~