Brennan Park Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

She opened heavy shutters,
as she did each morning
and let the old air out
the fresh and voices in.

Across the street, in Brennan Park
there sat a figure, all alone,
on rough-cut boards,
the benches had been given
by city father Griffith in the Fall.

A lazy wind played with the stragglers
half shrivelled leaves of the old oak,
scaring the wits out of the finches
that had begun the dance of their
amazing and astonishing fertility.

Another cloudy one, she thought,
and such a frosty chill there in the air,
she waved across to Simon the fat cop,
his beat was so predictable, each day

he'd make the rounds throughout the Park
down to the hotdog stand, there shot the breeze,
with Dame Louise who preached about
the great advantages of German mustard,
without the benefit of which the dogs would
still be proper and nutritious, as well as tasty,
but it was only just a nickel more to spend.

And Simon stood in front of the lone bench
apparently interrogating the man without a hat,
who sat there, still, in the romantic rain
without umbrella or the sense to slip away.

A whistle blew its shrill attention-getting stinger
to her half open shutter where it echoed,
and Simon now was grabbing the young man
and shook him by the shoulder, when he slumped

and lay there, oh so still, and motionless just
as the 200 pounder cop was clearly frozen,
though constantly he blew his whistle, louder
and with more urgency, so plaintively and
with a hint of sadness and the promise of disaster.

An ambulance arrived in record time, took 'it' away,
and Simon had a cup of her delicious café-au-lait,
he told her that he'd packed the man's belongings,
as was the regulation police procedure in this state,
into a plastic zip-loc bag, it had a lot of room inside
but all that Simon found and placed inside, then labelled
with fire-engine red felt pen John Doe, of Brennan Park,
was a syringe with just a tiny bit of green still left inside.

For: Philip, Bernard, Alexander, Hans and the Melbourne Park