Sun-licked is the site of daisies buttercups clover and a girl

Sun-licked is the site of daisies buttercups clover and a girl
kicking in the seams of a denim-coloured ball

kicking it fiercely and scampering on.

Couples lie about in flesh-made intimacies
each territorially distanced from voyeuristic lip

readers like myself. Young women are

stretched out on grassy slopes exposing white skin
eyelids bellies thighs sticking their barefeet in the fires of the sun.

Dumped on the lawn there’s this statue

muscled and veined. A  man locked in stone.
A cheap Mediterranean imitation of the Phideas School. I

touch him with the palm of my hand and a
dwarf passes - the head of Zeus on a boy’s body. He

feeds bread to swans and the swans rise up on their wings.

The ball comes rolling and I kick it on. The girl
runs past into the mouth of a sculpted corrugated-iron carp.

The ball seems to have a life of its own. It

bounces down a path getting more lift more spring
denting the atmosphere. There are people here

flying about like kites

arms spread out catching the warm whipping winds
their bodies flattened against a blue sky.

Summer’s quirkiness is spruced up for the occasion. Workmen

with painted faces chain smoke roll-your-owns and
argue about who’s going to pick up the shovel who’s

going to dig the next ditch. The ball hangs above them -

it hovers wobbles - enters their burnt-out swallowing mouths
one by one         by one.