Europe in Summer

Sun overhead
Cooling elms give relief,
Bringing out long legs in dresses
Old men playing bocci, playing chess;
A poet tossing yesterday's bread
scraps to pigeons, shooting
Paranoid looks between frantic pecks;
Children skipping on cobblestone
Young lovers cooing like doves,
Wrapping necks on a bench;
Fountains muffle their secret tryst
A gaggle of old ladies opposite,
Say, Look at the wench kiss! -
Where are her parents? -
Have they forgotten the swarthy men
with whom they made kids?
Europe.
Summer in the park.
Hard to fathom there ever was a dark age on the continent,
Or a world fallen apart.

~ MR (July 9, 2016)