The Public Garden

Burnished, burned-out, still burning as the year you lead me to our stamping ground. The city and its cruising cars surround the Public Garden. All’s alive— the children crowding home from school at five, punting a football in the bricky air, the sailors and their pick-ups under trees with Latin labels. And the jaded flock of swanboats paddles to its dock. The park is drying. Dead leaves thicken to a ball inside the basin of a fountain, where the heads of four stone lions stare and suck on empty fawcets. Night deepens. From the arched bridge, we see the shedding park-bound mallards, how they keep circling and diving in the lanternlight, searching for something hidden in the muck. And now the moon, earth’s friend, that cared so much for us, and cared so little, comes again— always a stranger! As we walk, it lies like chalk over the waters. Everything’s aground. Remember summer? Bubbles filled the fountain, and we splashed. We drowned in Eden, while Jehovah’s grass-green lyre was rustling all about us in the leaves that gurgled by us, turning upside down . . . The fountain's failing waters flash around the garden. Nothing catches fire.