“The public is as much intimate as universal, the private is as much universal as intimate.” William Desmond, The Intimate Universal, 39.

I am one of you

in the park on Labor Day

at sundown: crickets,

their sad ecstacy;

the harmonica man, going

over his song list;

the volunteer, dead-

heading pale summer roses;

the patient mother

with impatient child.

Tomorrow time will give back

the rest of our lives.