You toss the dented Frisbee heartward to me
across a Riverside Park promenade path. Your
striped jersey, burgundy suspenders, my patchwork
painter pants, lavender tee. Speckled birds, we
race caladium and impatiens-banked walkways.
Not all flocks capable of flight, early migrants
we dash past iris and azaleas down into an underpass
where the darkness unfolds. My silhouette backlit,
I reverberate a high-spin A into flame. Illuminated
briefly in diminutive perspective at tunnel’s end,
you spool a low B into reed. Salt delicate on
your lips, we sprawl out by 79th St. Boat Basin,
Frisbee in backpack, our pillow over sparse grass.
A helicopter clatters above, a shiver against April
chill. I glance through mimosa’s overlapping
moire that splits the solid indigo. Where this will
go. I pull my paint-spattered turtleneck over torn
t-shirt to camouflage my hunger, my frail wing.
Anique Sara Taylor, Phoenicia, from
manuscript Cobblestone Mist
