Saturday, March 4, 2023

OCEAN PARKWAY


OCEAN PARKWAY


This is the place:

Where time seems to stand still

And only the clouds move above

To show those under the mercurial sky

That the weather is changing. 


Decades ago: 

I looked down from a window

In a building high over Ocean Parkway.

I can still taste my aunt’s sweet turkey dinner

On the day the red ripe cranberries rolled 

Over my pink tongue.


That day:

On a bench, 

The reader in a blue suit read his book

As a girl sat in a blue dress on another bench

And watched a rider pass on a blue bike 

Going to a grey building down a shady road.


Now:

So many years later another face 

Looks out of that same window and watches

An old man on a bench read a grey newspaper

As an old lady throws crumbs to feed pigeons.


In the rain:

A car passes going south and then

Slows down to a red light, a red light that 

Only stops movement for a minute

A minute of time on Ocean Parkway. 


Marjorie J. Levine © 2023




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