Park I Poem by robert dickerson

Between the wing-beats of a dove
through the quivery moiree of noon
on a block I still thrill to walk down,
I saw you, park, remembered again your fimbriate,
egg-like perfection of a kind-
a quick-walk blur, a
rainbow evilly smudged, oh,
I'll go no more in there.

I recalled yew buds
berried red and water-spattered;
children whooping blood-filled and innocent;
abstract fountains and topiaries
pigeons coupling chuffily in the dust;
ladies of excess leisure
whose thoughts drifted over
the tops of newspapers.

I remembered chessboards
fixed in concrete, and about its deathwatch,
the sundial, its Werkstatte warning
graven in, divvying up the day;
the shifting alliances of flowers;
the hedgerows that spelled 'Laura' from above,
boughs of sweetest bougainville, and behind,
every tree beckoning, a Pan.

Swing songs trilling like
wounded birds; the cease
less pummel of balls, balls,
at didtances and the cicada
too easily enchanted by
the mowers' poppied odes;
by-product aromas of gasses and grass-
treasonous angel, where were you?

Waterslick tarpit of the
going-down to drink hours, sunk
up to their terrified eyes, Park,
hurt to cure hurt, Park, foul
Potters' field, rustic
ossiary of iced lusts, Park,
Allegories peerless drowning pool-
Are we then, similarly scarred?