Summer comes

UNTITLED

We sat on a park bench drinking beers

staring at the fountain with the marble boys and flying fish,

water splashing everywhere

on kids, on grandpas, on dogs, 

while the afternoon grew warmer

you started speaking of books

you’d been reading Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy,

and my mind naturally went back to his time

Imprisoned, facing death,

Lady Philosophy standing over his shoulder,

like Billy Collins also imagined his readers standing

and T.S. Eliot imagined Dickens over WIlkie Collins,

billions of people standing over someone else's shoulders

through untold centuries,

I got up, full of wistful thoughts,

went up to the fountain to splash a pigeon 

who flew off offended, while a robin approvingly winked at me

devious pretty bird.

My friend had now become tipsy and sleepy

sunlight warming our bench and us,

I thought of Boethius once again

Lady Philosophy dictating her words to him

consoling him with hope, with meaning, with understanding,

as he waited for the executioner’s bright impersonal sword,

I cracked open the last of our beers

my friend softly snoring the afternoon away

rocked by water splashing.