Remembering / Infidelities

Remembering / Infidelities
  
The pigeons, having courted, hatched their eggs,
Are busy feeding their insistent young,
And so are little birds that dart from trees,
Whose limbs are now with verdant vestments hung.

But beasts are blessed and cursed with memory –
And they can see the future too at times.
And so, while still in summer's hot embrace,
I lie with other seasons in my rhymes...

While walking underneath a brilliant sun,
As summer spreads its spell of warmth and light,
I still remember well the spring, the fall,
The winter's cold – the dark of longest night...

******

For summer's end, by orbit is ordained,
As every day the sun goes slowly south.
And this is known to birds as well as men –
With winter's breath on twig in sparrow's mouth...

The seasons dance in circles 'round and 'round,
And each has qualities that are its own.
In winter, I will walk this street again,
Remembering the summers I have known...

******
 
It's said that men are polygamous, while
The women are a monogamous lot.
I doubt that this is true, but then I smile,
Remembering I've stirred proverbial pot...

For though I have been faithful to my spouse,
As much, perhaps, by circumstance as will,
I still have lain in every season's bed,
And striven, there, to comic roles fulfill.

And since I then retained those memories,
I once recited verses in my sleep.
And those, who heard, then looked at me in doubt,
As all my secrets they could share – or keep.

2013 July 14th, 5:30 pm–6:30 pm
(walking on Bath & Benson Avenues
between 18th & 19th Avenues – and 
seated at the Guatemalan diner at 
the corner of Benson & 18th)
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn