At the Basin in the Luxembourg Garden by Alexandra Ernst
The sun is hot though it is September.
There are crêpes au chocolat to eat
with sweet remnants sticking
to small fingers and mouths.
Children shriek and splash each other in the basin.
A young couple embraces on the grass.
A newborn nurses in a pink sweater
once worn by his older sister.
Two weeks old and he is already here
in the middle of it all.
His mother sits cross-legged
in a summer dress on the moist sand,
as children pour water from buckets
all around her.
There are plastic containers
full of sand, presents for the mothers.
There are wet shirts and two girls even
wear their rinsed out underpants on their
heads as hats.
The gayness of the moment is
as certain as the fatigue which
will come at the end of it all.
I chase my crawling son
looking over the terrain
for anything he might stick
in his mouth or harm himself with.
I see the pigeon feathers and cigarette
butts, the pebbles and plastic toys
that are smaller than are safe.
This moment is part of millions of moments.
The sun is only a fraction of the sun.
That is all I have to say.
My poetry has appeared in various literary journals including IO MAGAZINE, THE MINETTA REVIEW, THE ANTHOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND WRITERS and, most recently, in the May/June issue 2008 issue of ALL THINGS GIRL. Though I have lived in Paris for the past 18 years, I spend each summer hiking with my husband and two small children in the Adirondacks and in my home state of Vermont.
