Promenade
Bowne Park, Queens. Labor Day Morning.
A man stumbles across a wedding.

This is the brief departure from the norm
that celebrates the norm. The wind is warm
and constant through the field set at the heart
of the impervious borough, yet apart.
This day and this place, born from other days
and places as a parenthetic phrase,
and this sky, where a businessman may write
the purposeless, brief beauty of a kite,
are like the possibilities of love.
The kite leaps up, rasps fifty feet above
until it is almost unusual,
and fastens there. The wind's predictable
but private method with it sets it free
to dive toward greater plausibility
and finish its digression in the wide
municipal burlesque of countryside.
What distantly appear to be festoons
of white, white bunting, trefoils of balloons
in white, improve the black affectless trees
where three girls stand like caryatides
patiently holding crepe bells to a bough.
Something exceptional will happen now.
But first, the fat, black, wind-swept frock will swerve
past the buffet to steal one more hors d'oeuvre.
He floats like an umbrella back to where
his book is, smoothes his robe, and smoothes his hair.
Yellow grass undulates beneath the breeze.
Couples file through the corridor of trees
towards rows of folding seats. Bridesmaids unhook
from groomsmen's arms. Every face turns to look;
and when the bride's tall orange bun's unpinned
by ordinary, inconvenient wind,
all, in the breath it takes a yard of hair
to blaze like lighted aerosol, would swear
there was no greater miracle in Queens.
Wish is the word that sounds like what wind means.

Copyright © 2004 Joshua Mehigan All rights reserved
from Dogwood
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission