SUMMER AT WATERLOO PARK Dr. Rienzi Crusz This day was unlike any other day. The sun went wild, shook the grey morning by the scruff of its neck and cracked the lingering winter crystals from my eyes to a yellow pantomime of summer people. There was Lisa, the pink girl with sun hair, choking on a blue popsicle; And Patsy's brown baby strapped the sun on her back and bounced into the round wading pool with sparrow wings and duckling feet; a hush of narrowed eyes, as Mrs Donowa's daughter shivered the diving board with velvet heels and stemmed like a sun-flower of olive flesh to the waiting sun; Old Mr Rogers was still alive, and seemed to climb down slowly from palaces of distant eyes to green bikini earth; even Mrs Jones could not be kept out on a day like this: she ambled like a pink elephant, sipping soda through a straw and thrusting the years with cracked skin and redundant muscle. On the far side, the old greying park-bench bloomed to the boiled sweating faces of Mr McIver's family, their russet mounds of hot-dogs, ketchup, and drumstick chicken fast disappearing under their red mouths. The robins weren't there. with acknowledgement to Malahat Review. Correcting printing errors in "Boy and Bird": line 8 should read: on thin bamboo bones. line 38 should read: the wind flag acknowledgement to : Quarry.

This article was originally published in Cross Cultures Magazine in Volume 1 - Issue 4 - 1992. Unauthorized copying, distribution or other usage without express written permission of the publisher is prohibited.