and green plaid shorts goes strolling <br />through Juneau Park at eight o’clock <br />with only a hooded yellow windbreaker <br />for protection, trawling the bushes after work <br /> <br />while tugboats crawl the dark freshwater <br />outlook. Mist coming in not even from a sea, rain <br />later in the evening from Lake Michigan, a promise <br />like wait till your father gets home. The air <br /> <br />is full of fog and botched seductions, reluctance <br />of early summer to arrive. It’s fifty-five degrees <br />in June, the bodies can barely be made out <br />leaning on picnic tables under trees or <br /> <br />set sentinel like statues along the paths (the founder <br />corrodes quietly on his pedestal, inscription <br />effaced under faggots go home). Lips <br />touched to a public fountain for a passerby <br /> <br />shape clouded breath into a who-goes-there?, into a <br />friend-or-foe?, eyes catching eyes like hooks <br />cast in a shallow tide. Night pouring in like water <br />into a lock, the rusted freighter lowered level <br /> <br />to level, banks of the cement canal <br />on either side, but miles from any dock.<br /><br />Reginald Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eros-in-his-striped-blue-shirt/
