Human Ruins

It is warm outside I think
I am waiting for someone
Who is late
So I get on my bike
And pedal around a park
Named after a dead man

On the west side
Of the North Pond
The ice quietly whimpers
As ducks and migrating geese
Make ripples that turn to waves
The ice breaks

On a street now
Riddled with pot holes
I cross to the other side
Of the one-way heading East
And I stop at a bakery
Where an Austrian man greets me

I ask him where he’s been
“California.” He tells me
Where to him the ladies
are all pretty I tell him
I’m waiting and grab
one bag of day-old bread

She sees me now on the
Street I lock up my bike
I’m late she nods
I smile she studies
We head West we shove
Off toward the lake

It is Sunday
I say on principle
“We should pray”
So we slow down
More careful now in
Step with Spring mud

The bread is hard
I break it she holds
Hers like a sacred relic
I toss mine
It lands in open water
She doesn’t get it

“Just wait.”
I tell her about mallards
And how Canadian geese
Are impatient almost
Ravenous in warm climate
And right then they descend

On the half frozen pond
Silence evaporates
On the beating of wings
As she takes her stale vestige
And tosses it
Before Nature’s grace

She smiles I contemplate
The delineation of her
Face on the water
With mine toward her
The ducks outnumber
The geese fly away

“Partners for life…”
She echoes
I answer
Remind her that it is Sunday
That she needs
To have a little faith

In nature
Some animals wait
And don’t get full
On unnecessary things
Like the corpulent geese
The mallards fly away

We too withdraw ourselves
From the warm sanctuary
Of North Pond and walk West
Gracefully
And wait for the sunset
To shine on all the cyclopean buildings

Like a lantern
Illuminating the remnants
Of a forgotten city
Submerged in mire
We marvel at the scene as
one endless tomb without a king