The World is Your Canvas

I love them all

the bike path and the swans and the concrete and the needles

those same brick towers lean over Fresh Pond and peer into its navy depths

whose eyes I looked into in the 90s

whose banks belong to the Massachusett and not you

the pink of magnolias and the jewel tones of the sky are so vivid that their image flashes behind my eyes like an x-ray when I close them

I found a mulberry tree late last June whose branches bore so many enormous berries, bursting from their fingers

My thumbs were purple for days from the juicy stains of sunlight and stars

We stuck our tie-dyed tongues out and laughed at ourselves and the sound of the laugh was of an inner child’s delight

I think of my ancestors who were documented as inhabiting Cambridge from 1638 onwards

and when I touch the soil on Russell field and Jerry’s pond