#poetry - Between the Bushes

Haze-blue at high noon, in the park
We lay like roasting peanuts
On a smooth brown cotton blanket.

I, on my stomach with mouth
buried into my folded arms,
laughed at your clever jokes.

You on you back with legs bent,
one crossed over the other,
Form golden slides for golden rays.

We soak and slurp this lazy noon.
Oil lakes collect deep in your navel
And shallow at the small of my back.

The white gray city looms over us,
White haze, metal and stone,
Penetrates our green grass haven--

Back Bay fens, park and glade,
Of muddy pond and Muddy river,
Of dirt paths and idle grass.

Here we stake our claim.
On even cut grass we lay
And close our eyes and listen.

A regular clink of bat and ball,
da-dunk da-dunk of ball and court,
slurk-slurk of skate and walk.

Dog barks, dogs bark, dogs are playing.
Children talk, children laugh,
boys are laughing, one girl screams.

Lovers giggle and lovers giggle,
lovers make sound. Lovers and their baby,
Lovers and their children, they whisper secrets.

Feet drag on even cut grass,
Ploosh-slucking feet in swamp muck and
Plink-plinking pebbles in the pond.

I open my eyes, a world of green
Fights a world of blue, white haze mediating
we are baking as witnesses.

All colors, all warmed and golden flesh,
All Back Bay fens, all a sun loved day,
All sound and scent, all bodies, dance.

Clear clean cut grass, hazy smokey skyline,
Burning black path and ruddy mud pond,
Oh the stalky garden, and there between dark bushes

Colors dances, fight and mingle,
Like business on a trading day,
as floral bloom in this heat of spring.

My chest is heavy with my own weight,
I raise myself and sit on my feet
And laugh again at this comedy.

Bushes now twitter across the path
With a man between the bushes, twittering,
A gawker dark-loving everything he sees.

"Why do we come here?" I ask you,
"This place is full of freaks."
"Its warm" you say, "and quaint..."

Your eyes are closed but mine are not,
and yet you are right, it is warm.
So I and another man, clear out those bushes.
    ...and now it is quaint.