fashion statement

New Dress

Spring is a yellow dress

Pooled about the bare feet of winter

Robins strain to tug

Gauzy fabric over ivory hips

Embers beading hot

Along a scoop of neckline.

revision

Roger Angell In Central Park

My wife was game to change

direction when I wondered

out loud if you were the man

on the bench in the sun

minding his own business

beneath a Mets cap

contemplating yet another

major league season or

daffodils and Spanish bluebells

blooming on Cedar Hill

enjoying his solitude on a fine

spring morning much like

my long dead father glimpsed

moments before basking

shirt off in the Sheep Meadow

the sanctity of privacy

and nothing more I tell myself

hastening us across

the 79^th Street Traverse

toward the teeming refuge

of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

This Old Man

Roger Angell

My wife was game to change

direction when I wondered

out loud if you were the man

on the bench in the sun

minding his own business

beneath a baseball cap

contemplating yet another season or

daffodils and Spanish bluebells

blooming on Cedar Hill

enjoying the solitude of a fine spring morning

much like my long dead father basking

shirt off on the Sheep Meadow

simple respect, I tell myself, hastening us

across the 79^th Street Traverse to the teeming

refuge of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.