Street Pocket Park

                  After Ed Roberson

Stone ponies crack and rear, an almost

daily beat of boredom.  We cannot close

our ears to it.  Their eyes are hen-

pecked, soft.  Their mouths are thatched

with hay.  The river is silting in, lull

of soil gently slumping, the bed

of cobble cold.  A parade-ending din of blue

houses slip their stilts.  We are without words

sullen plums pocked and marred, vulnerable

to each other, to any thing's tiny teeth.