Garden in the City- A Poem Up high amongst the balconies of glass and steel, brilliant pedals bask in the warm sun you feel; the other surfaces reflect. The stems sway with the steady wind, sprout and spread to the old man's touch. He's cultivated the tender soil; disciplined. They've sprung their beauty over the monotony. You'll be remiss to find another soul, tending the garden so. For this old folk, stands on his balcony alone. Decades past, before the towers scraped the sky, this old man's balcony sat high over steady waters. Back then, he and his wife sowed the seeds to these flowers. While they smiled and laughed, the flowers grew, but so too did the city. Towers rose and the people shifted in the streets. Though a child that man could not bear, his flowers and wife were plenty. The old man has grown old and she's since passed. The flowers remain, steadfast. To his dying day, he'll toil. About the soil, their beauty will hang from the rails.

I felt I could see my stomach throbbing in the shadow cast down from me by the full moon. While the rest of the city celebrated the third night of Carnivali, watching the fireworks in the sky and drinking to their hearts desire or their liver’s demise, I lay in wait on the canal docks. The boss assured me this be the best way to earn the necessary wage to feed myself and, with luck, care for my family. Sparse had been the patron who’d sought passage along the canals since the start of Carnivali and sparser had been the wage. It was when I shut my eyes hoping sleep would abate the hunger that a coin hit my sack and the gondola shifted under their weight. Even with the full moon I could barely make out their faces, but I knew it was a man and woman. I could tell by her perfume, she was no commoner and by his bright colored coat which shone perhaps brighter than the moon, the gentleman was high society. “Just float us any which way,” said he. Float I did, and soon felt the gondola rock under movements other than my own. They had stripped. Left their clothes beneath them like a mattress. The moon light glistened on her forehead and his back as he kissed her neck and thrust to the rhythm of the delicate waves lapping at the curled bow of the gondola. It was then when I noticed she was the fiance of my country’s president, so I assumed it was he. But the man was darker than my countrymen, skin like desert sand. When she turned the man over and straddled him and the moon shone on his face I finally saw and I knew then that my stomach’s howl would soon be silenced, for this man was the prince of my nation’s greatest rival. For this affair, my life would soon turn around. #plebchain #artstr #coffeechain #art #writer #grownostr