Forest Park Lakefront Facilities

“The tree that bears the fruit
Is not the one that was planted”
-W.S. Merwin

It costs $125 for calm in this goddamn town,
and calm shuts down at 11pm.
It doesn’t matter if no one’s using it,
you can’t have it,
so get back to your dorm, kid.

They’ve scrubbed calm down with antiseptic
and renamed it:
“Forest Park Lakefront Facilities”
And from the laundry-detergent-bottle-blue, I’m pretty sure the lake it fronts
has been filled with chorine,
or the blue cleaner you fill toilets with,
otherwise why say “facilities”
as in: grandma primly pushing her chair away,
“Pardon me dear, I need to use the . . .”

I’m pretty sure part of the fault is mine,
and Rob’s, and Manny’s, and Tommy’s, and every
box-wine-howl pass-the-guitar session freshman year
2am, sky and water black, fuck the neighbors,
they can’t hear us down here anyway,
tightroping on the last boulder
before the city’s stone outcropping gets swallowed by the lake.

Now, there’s only a grandma at this beach
a sausage-baron heiress
or a CEO’s discontented mother,
hunched on the sidewalk that borders the sand,
tiny pebbles grasping at the grips of the wheels of her chair

She does not move
She does not caterwaul
She stays sunken in her wheelchair,
wrapped in her shawl to shield from 90 degrees of sun
and stares
and stares
and stares