Riverside Park, After Light Showers

by Ryan Harper

Our latest rain has shown such as we are.
One mourning dove has paused against the wall;
the stone, cut like a scalloped nimbus, frames
the bird arrested. Peace slips in 

as footholds founder in the slickening:
the grounds collect green aureoles of shed
seed bounding puddles in the buckled walk, 
diverting passage, blockages

for all but stamping children fixed of aim, 
careening shrieking toward the next big splash.
The older walkers dodge the juicy blasts
of summer leaning, bowling down 

the heat. What different figures made of, owed
in space—prodigious peace awobble, weight
of water parted orders, shifts the lots,
convection of the public acts:  

jogger soaked and stretching on the bench
the tarped man sleeping bare man striding wide
white families their dead-eyed dogs the shrill
claim-staking gladness of polite

endless demands—a lot ingenerate, 
beset with heavy weather, taking steps
to swish away the runoff. Now a child
is bawling down the walk to have

café biscotti—choice of life, as life—
the seed bracts circle, tumbled, sopping dim.
The dove has moved. The peace is strained. We are
the times in times beyond our own.

Author's Bio:

Ryan Harper is an Assistant Professor of the Practice at Fairfield University-Bellarmine. He is the author of My Beloved Had a Vineyard, winner of the 2017 Prize Americana in poetry (Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2018). Some of his recent poems and essays have appeared in Portland Review, Third Wednesday, Thirteen Bridges, Paperbark, and elsewhere. Ryan is the creative arts editor of American Religion Journal. He lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut.