By Terry Trowbridge
A lover and I signaled each other with cynical looks
in a busy place called Montebello Park
where we saw friends of friends with anonymous friends
who talked around us about their incomplete plans
for choosing a city where they would live next year.
The park was steadily growing a scene from a city
becoming busier with every bird and housecat
crisscrossing the trees, their next-year purposes subsumed in
catacombs carved with long digging strokes
and smelling like whatever gets squirreled
beneath the trees.
Like the city itself, the acorns in the center,
covered in tooth marks, are buried
even before the streetlights come on,
and they never complete their oaky plans.
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Terry Trowbridge is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for funding poetry during the polycrisis.