Lakewood Reflections Poem by Charles Eastland

LAKEWOOD REFLECTIONS

The park bench holds love
carved deep in wood
more permanent than the unavailing heart
'Always I love you
Rosa 78'

Be still, be quiet, become
October's ceremony of the dying
leaves radiant Indian blankets
ignite a stick of melancholy incense
and with contests of fire colors
arouses vague aromatic pleasures
of another park, another age
another lover's reverie

Piano notes here from a side street window
linger briefly in delicate symphony
of breezes and a million blazing palettes
painting a divine memory on the senses
of those who travel slow
Invitations too, to test a grand illusion
Come, walk among inverted trees
and clouds hung from a solid sky
glazed flat here below digital perfect
on the placid palate of this lake

Coincidence arrives with its mystic mind games
and a holy man appears on the hill above me

A bearded dark silo of fermented knowledge,
his deep presence invokes kabalistic expectations
sobering in the animated row of squirrels
he stands with-ancient book clasped in veins
pulsing old-country blood memories
He is assessing me, my presence of calm solitude,
my purpose

All blessings are accepted here
I sense favor in the air by the lake
this tender heart of a tough town;
a five or ten minute walk-to-vacation
for the slow man
is this strip of paradise
around whose lovely shores
horse and buggy millionaires
clatter only in aging memories
was mine today.

Now the bells of St. Mary peal immaculate
across the water black clad Hasidic animate
crowd time is approaching
hurling noise and stealing space
disrupting my nature frequency
suddenly I'm reminded
love-times-two calls me home
to my essential good

Charles Eastland