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Delaware Park Postcard
Buffalo, New York
A willow wears its hair the way Phyllis Diller
did, its yellow wig too weird for Delaware
Park's air of Edwardian grandeur. Dried weeds tear
like the lace of old dresses. Last summer
we paddled boats here where skaters soon will scribble
their cursive. But summer is over like a war
whose casualties now bore the public. Though I care
I cannot fix what the equinox made rubble.
Joggers stagger past the closed casino
whose Jazz Age days I like to imagine
as I walk around the lake, aching
with losses bigger than any wager made there. I know
I must go on. Brown loosestrife braids the air
with its dry reflection of mermaids' hair.
Thistles guard the lake's cracked mirror
like miles of barbed wire crocheted to snare
Narcissus from his dark oasis and
me from despair. . . . Dearest, any city I had
planned would have a place like this. We'd promenade
as dusk descends, though in that place you'd take my hand.
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