The red metal beast
at the sculpture park is art
and I am having a hard time
being here beside it.
Its cathedral arc of leg and neck
shadows me and some children
on the grass. Never have I thought
of grass being ugly before or
train tracks as stagnant
as those passing before the shore
before me, rusted and banal, not
unlike me, these days, when I try
to find my ease. Amid shallow
trees, like a consistent stutter I would pin
still with my fingers if I could,
spins a black statue ampersand
& & & &
Tired of permanency, I sought
the garden of coastal rosettes slipping petals,
each bare-hipped and seedful,
some golden as the humbler buttercup
but with names like Dolce Vita
and American Pillar,
their heads bent with the radiation
of Seattle’s end-of-summer sunsets.
I know later I will tell him today was good,
even the old man caught
in the sprinklers on the lawn,
his book stuck shut with surprise,
even the lone seal that twisted up
from deep in the black sound,
fluid as the strangest metal.