Playground In Early Fall
A woman pushes her child
who swings on a leather strap
as wings of sprightly yellow jackets slap
the afternoon. Beguiled
by the scent of bones, charred meat,
a mongrel wanders, scavenging the trash
near grills, as scattered cash
might make you pause. Kids, fleet
as pups, play wolf-cub-rough. Their howls carry
across the length of the park.
They wriggle through tunnels, dark
as a serpent’s gut, and slither down slides as scary
as seeing the teeth of the hound
now nosing around the fence
that shields them from a world far too immense.
He marks it, scuffs the ground.
He seems sublimely numb
to the squall of squeals and shrieks (as if the noise
that blooms from these boisterous boys
and clamorous girls must come
from beyond the world), while those who are climbing and crawling
are unaware a fog
will make them deaf as the dog
to the whispering leaves of memory, falling, falling.
Greenland Shark
Swimming adagio
through frozen seas, you grow
far slower than a hickory
and, by some wicked trickery,
are the oldest vertebrate
on earth. Is that so great?
Perhaps. Or maybe not.
It would depend a lot
on whether you’re go-getting,
letting your gills down, jetting
through the Atlantic Ocean,
or lost. You haven’t a notion
you were a youth when Bruno
was born. Perhaps you do know
that you’ve, indeed, outlasted
the hoariest whale that blasted
its songs across the sea
or a bivalve thought to be
five hundred seven years old.
While swimming through the cold,
you’re surely not aware
of the net which soon will snare
your ancient bones. They’ll floor us.
“Amazing!” we will chorus.
Martin Elster, who never misses a beat, was for many years a percussionist with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. Martin’s poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad. His honors include the 2022 Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest winner, Rhymezone’s poetry contest, five Pushcart nominations, and a Best of the Net. A full-length collection, Celestial Euphony, was published by Plum White Press in 2019.
Sparks of Calliope 