Square du Temple

Moon on late daylight: green fruit plucked from a stalk.
Almost July; almost the end of a cherry
season. I walked out of a literary
cocktail early, because I couldn't make more small talk
and because it's a pervasive Joy to walk
across the square at not-yet-dusk. Its tutelary
geniuses, preadolescent, very
slender and supple African children, hawk-
swoop on skates around the resting lawn.
(The toddlers and their guardians have gone
home.) A breeze flies from their shoulder-blades,
loquacious and invisible, in banners.
The duck pond is refreshed by small cascades,
as silence cures an overdose of manners.

Copyright © 2003 Marilyn Hacker All rights reserved
from Crab Orchard Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission