Narrative poems including The Lady in the Garden

 

The Lady in the Garden

A picture-post-card date near the wide
Serpentine sway of the wide Schuylkill River

Meandering through Central Philly's park garden,
Towered over by leaning elms, while 3 long canoes

Swift by to the paddling of Ivy League collegians.
Gazing at my dear companion in the Garden

A Quaker girl, Karen, chestnut-caped round
In waist-length hair like a swaying black ephod,

Vivid in her red chambray shirt and blue jeans,
Is an aspiring concert violinist but converses 

Passionately about King's March in 3 months.
Myself, drafted, a Conscientious Objector

Working with lost-saken kids in a mental ward,
Disturbed by their absent parents' bad living,

But am still so youthfully focused and narrowed,
More concerned with my companion's

Figured shape than humanity’s ship of state.
Gazing at Karen, hoping for love in the Garden

We sit cross-legged on the lush parkway green,
Getting ready to eat our carefully bagged meal 

Of 2 peanut butter and grape sandwiches,
As we discuss the ravages of far-off Nam

And Bob Dylan's 'hard rained' croons.
Sharing deeply with her in the Garden

But then I inhale a fuming putrid odor
Coming from behind us; I twist and see

About 6 feet away this bag of a lady in a filthy rag
Of a dress lunging slowly forward, hanging

Onto the ugly mesh of a shopping bag.
Her stench to high heaven wafts so rancid that

I pinch my nose tightly and turn away.
Gazing (instead) at my date in the Garden

But lo and behold! my dear violinist rises
And welcomes the old hag, “Hi Lady, please join us

For our Sunday snack here in the warm sun?”
 but I get all upside-down in my face

Gazing, surprised and frustrated in the Garden
As the homeless hag sprawls haggardly on the grass,

Next to us, her wretched, spotted shift
Wrinkling up her scraggly legs. She reaches

Out a grubby hand, grabs a sandwich,
And shoves half of it in her narrow jaws,

Chews open-mouthed and teethed.
I fume at this ugly interloper in the Garden

But then am shocked awake, almost too late,
Jesus emphasized on 'the least of these"! 

I join my dear musician's sharing our meal,
Thus we commune 3 of human kind,

Below trees of compassioning
In the modern Garden of hope.

 

1st pub.  in The Oak Bend Review
then in Dark Energy, a collection of Daniel's published poetry.
Get the book at Amazon.com and local bookstores.