The Park at Noon

Empty but for the play of shadows
on metal swingsets, slides, and one of those
carousels without the horses, slightly off
kilter, now resting from its limping gait.
Ants wind their way through peels of paint the sun's
parched; one by one by instinct filing.
The concrete dais in the corner crumbles
under a solitary Christmas wreath
that dangles in April, sighing O
trailing red ribbons on the breeze. Fronds splay
the dusty underside of palms, and up
stretch a green net of gauze against the sky.
A man comes down the street, his cries the names
of fruit, as if to speak them gives him pain.