Your park is a tiny round island,
swarming with pigeons,
circled and swept
by gasoline waves of cars.

A mumble of green
dissected by two inter-
secting sidewalks
that drop onto the road.

Here are seven trees, a couple of benches.
And here’s the official sign
with your name on one side only.

Not a line of your cobalt poetry in sight.
Yet, in the Annex, your neighbourhood,
you’ve left this Lilliputian clue:
“one island
small as a wish …”
that has
“never quite been found.”

— KAREN L. L. ANDERSON

(Originally published Christmas, 1998.)