Shopping



A sky of pigeon gray. The sun a beautiful stain.
Air without a breath. Crowds in motley,
cheerful, insouciant: no one is worrying
too much. A little girl
falls and cries out, her white shoe
behind her on the sidewalk. But her mother’s there:
no tragedy, just a few small tears.
I can smell oil, leaves, soft pretzels, grass.
The day moves like a parent
trying to carry too many presents.
Several fall, and one or two are definitely lost,
but, surely, there are more, many more, where they came from.


_____

Christopher Bernard’s collection The Socialist’s Garden of Verses won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and was named one of the “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021” by Kirkus Reviews. His two “tales for children and their adults” – If You Ride A Crooked Trolley . . . and The Judgment Of Biestia, the first stories in the “Otherwise” series – will be available in December 2023.