Central Park

I'd like to buy one when I die,
one of the benches not yet spoken for,
not yet tagged with a small stainless plaque

and someone else's name.
If they're all gone, please
help me carry a replica

to the boat pond so I can sit
and watch the model boats get nowhere
beautifully, rented by the fixed hours

I'm grateful not to be out of yet.
Another flicker of love,
an updated Triple-A membership,

and a handful of Pilot G-Tec-C4 blue-black pens,
what else do I need?
Universe,

watch over us.
Boat, my poor faraway father says,
as if my mother has never seen one.

Boat, he says, and we say, Yes,
aren't they beautiful.
Come winter,

the boathouse here is locked up,
the pond drained,
except one year it wasn't

and my son and I convinced ourselves
his new Golden Bright
could sail across.

Merry Christmas, no one said
as I pulled the black plastic liner bags
from the empty trash cans

and stepped into them,
one for each leg,
and waded into the addled water

to salvage the present.
T think that moment is something to remember,
or something to remember me by,

brief, vivid, foolhardy
even the revenants watching from the line of benches
said so:

thus have been our travels.
Oblivion, they said,
there's no unenduring it.