Wright Park

In Tacoma the old man

crossing Wright Park

will not use a path

and ignores the statue

of Schiller, a German

poet who never visited

Tacoma--his loss. I can't

find a verb to say what 

the old man does as he 

goes up the slope

to the conservatory. It is

his own peculiar old

white-haired way of walking,

wearing a blue windbreaker

on a hot afternoon. Perfect

verbs and muscular 

buttocks belong to the young.

A woman in orange shoes

floats past him. Her profile

is regal. Now someone full

of Jesus moves through the park

preaching to purple-eyed drunks.

Acorns drop like hail pellets.

A three-year-old roll down a

slope, bedazzled, giggling.

The old man smiles at this,

arrives at the conservatory,

cough and spits. 

hans ostrom 2021