Wright Park
       

There must be drugs in the backpack
lying on the grass. One cop is leading away
the bicycle, while the other cops stand around
the man handcuffed on the ground,
not moving but clearly not hurt, waiting
like everyone else for what will happen next.
It's just one faggot on a bicycle,
says the old man standing near me,
why so many cops?
                                The park is beautiful
at dusk. The sky a blue-gray dome.
The lawns like billiard tables. The hundred
trees exhaling a good, cold air.
The statue of Ibsen looks over
the pond's mallards, the dog-walkers
and the smoking teenagers, the men beginning
to gather among the trees.
I don't know about violence, but what I see
is an old man in a blue ski jacket
on a summer evening, his cane thin and white
as a toothpick,
                        not stick enough
to beat back the faggots riding into the park
on their bicycles, the faggots in the flower beds,
the faggots that are the blue cops,
the faggots in the trees and bushes,
the faggots splashing into the pond of ducks
and carp, the faggots on the swings,
the faggots, the faggots everywhere, the faggots.

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Copyright © 2012 Rick Barot All rights reserved
from Gulf Coast
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission