Saturday, August 13, 2011

Balboa Park, August 2011

Settled in the shade of a tree,
next to tourists talking of Istanbul,
I trek with my pen and mind
through the imagination before me.

Baudelaire, my backwards companion,
guides me to the depths of pain.
I rebel. The children swim in the fountain.

I am distracted and detracted.
A woman asks me, in a thick accent,
to use my mobile phone. Her boy
sits close to me and he jumps up to leave.

Two men play the guitar in the distance.
I cannot hear them, but I assume it is beautiful.
"Right there! Right there!" a child yells and points.

And I am right there, absorbed in it all.
The wind gusts and I am lost.
Teenagers laugh maniacally.
I can hear the music now.

In this park, it is easy to sit
and reflect on humankind -
constantly in a state of movement
and rest, a mix of language
and cultures, united under one mission:
to be joyful in this moment.

Creative Commons License
This work by Scott Stewart is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

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