In the park today,
All that I found had a name.
The black ball of a robin’s eye,
The dizzy dart and dawdle of the sky blue butterfly
Were almost just the same,
But I had their song
In my hands and lips,
Like the grass I picked when it had been
Rolled and rolled until the colour of its darker green
Was now my fingertips,
So I travelled farther
Into the depth of the park,
With the gumboot slickness of a slug
And the tictoc waterboatmen out wrinkling the rug
On the pond’s unblinking dark.
There were daisies’ yellow circles
Inside daisies’ yellow circles
Piled on their slim white spoons,
And I ran around and round and round and sang the tunes
That all went round in circles.
Then we climbed into the evening
Up from the sign for the bus,
And everywhere I’d been that day
Looked out through the black railings as the world of the park pulled away,
Leaving us only us.
