Aftermath in the Boston Public Garden

We who survived – was it by luck or precaution? –
are so done with dining al fresco in our coats
or shrouded in plastic sheeting. We reclaim
our dining rooms and cozy restaurants,
our low-slung taverns and jostling for a Coors,
fingers in the pretzel-bowl under the tavern TV ballgame,
our sweaty raves and glitterati parties.

Skateboarders and strollers drift along the Charles
while that river rambles vaguely toward the harbor
as it always has, slow as a window-shopper.
Crowds resurge on the Common,
toddlers clamber on brass Ducklings, tourists toss
crusts from the Swan Boats for the real thing.

We can almost pretend the missing never were –
the wheezing dads, the grandmas celled away,
the bricked-in felons, the asthmatic or unlucky children
the docs and nurses fallen at their posts –
those stacked in trucks behind the Veterans’ Homes,
the late lost long-ventilated, the dead on hallway gurneys.

But blowsy roses return to the Public Garden.
Ferns and Cannas deck the elegant hindquarters
of Geo. Washington's stallion and the man himself
staring into the privileged middle passage
down the green parting of Commonwealth Avenue.

He was more gently departed. We are not the same
people we were two years ago, before we hid,
or sulked behind our masks, or refused to don them,
and might opt to protect but could not tend one another.
We barely note what has slipped and thinned away
while we were so industriously frightened
and kept apart.

The swans are nesting
again near the Japanese lantern. The willows droop
with familiar languor over the algaed pool.
Where you and I sauntered together
one steamy July eating Ben and Jerry’s
and dissecting Paradise Lost. I pause there now
jingling the few coins left in my pants’ pocket,
while in the frets of the Preston–Herschel
footbridge, a frayed web dangles, spiderless.