Emily in the Common

Near the frozen frog pond
puffy, colored clouds of skaters
etch wobbled elips es and ride the melt
with limbs cartoonishly out of synch
like Steamboat Willy.

A web-toed playground Thinker
leans from his pedestal
his goggled eyes wistful
as one who’s spent the winter
watching Bergmann films,
regarding the park in its winter light.

Under the crust of ice crunched leaves
the New England flesh is torn and scarred
by ancient hissing steam-shovels
for an underworld aquarium of rusted petroleum fish
and the ghosts
of witches hanging from gallows,
cattle that came here to feed,
the marching regiment of union dead.

The last time I saw her was in the commons
in the shadows of the parsimonious white steeple,
the swollen statehouse dome
and the bare cages of trees twined
in galvanized fence-posts.

Leaning into the wind
our breaths carried off in small puffs.
we affected such civility
whispering quiet, decent words.
We poke with sterling precision
and the wounds of civil war soldiers,
hoping the softness of dumb tongues
might pass for surgical acumen.

I saw her last year in the commons
in grey buttresses of winter light.
There was so much forgotten,
so much to forget
that she stunned me like and electric fish
to recollect
a certain slant of light
that oppresses like the weight
of cathedral tunes.