Today is Peru’s
National Holiday, 28th of July, 2015— (its 11:30 a.m.)
A silence hovers over Cherry Park, I’m on my patio-
roof, looking down.
The grass is heavy-green the old Bicycle Man (Carlos), waters it daily,
nightly! — (I had seen him last night, it must have been 12:30 p.m.)
A girl of perhaps eleven, with an Orange tight
shirt, slightly developing,
And blue trousers walks about, today—to and fro—like
the birds in the park here head bobs!
She lays on a slide, she sits on the teeter-totter,
then the swigs.
She walks by the statue of Mary gives the sign of
the cross, twice!
I’m still gazing steadily at her, —it’s her park
this holiday, the whole park—
After drifting here and there, visiting this spot
and that spot—she sees
The gate to the church, it is open ((attached to the
park; Father Marcelo’s not coming over for lunch, he’s received an earlier
offer…) (Rosa’s making red chicken))
Thus, into the Church Congo she goes, those iron
gates slightly open—; from out of fields of short grass.
As if she was one wheat grain, in the whole world.
It makes me think, as I did as a boy: dog tired of
pacing at home—
From room to room, like steps on a ship nowhere to
go: I often went to the empty lot,
In lieu of a park: with crows still calling,
swiftly gliding in the morning wind. Under the old towering oak tree on Indians
Hill, a tire attached to a limb, hung, I’d grab it and swung, like a monkey; what
then? I’d let loose jump in the sand.
Not knowing my childhood—as innocent as it was—would
never last as long as my adulthood, or old age!
Nor the disillusionment that lied ahead, —but
that’s another story for another poem, another day.
Today, it’s all about Ms. Orange and Blue, at
eleven, she’s exploring heaven!
#4773/7-28-2015
