Parody Contest Poems: A Walk in the Park, by Eric Norris

Eric Thomas Norris is a poet living in Portland, Oregon. His poems have appeared in: Impossible Archetype, One Poetry Journal, Trinity House Review, Ambit, Foglifter, Assaracus, E-Verse Radio, Soft Blow, The Raintown Review, and many other journals. His book publications include: Astronomy for Beginners and Letters from Oblivion. 

Eric writes: This is a reworking of W.H. Auden’s poem ‘A Walk After Dark.’ I continue Auden’s poem from darkness into a more doubtful morning in America. This poem was originally published in Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 years of Walt Whitman, by Squares & Rebels Press, in 2019.

A Walk in the Park

(after W.H. Auden)

Midnight, mackerel, pearly pink,

More colors than two eyes can count,

Send my spirits soaring through

The stratosphere, astonished by

How easily last night became

Today. Yes, the stars go out,

Like clockwork, as they always do,

At dawn. Walking off my run,

A young Marine sprints past — light speed —

Gone in a flash, just like Achilles.

I was his age just yesterday,

A Mycenæan twenty-one.

Already hot as Hades — hot

Enough to make the asphalt melt —

Unflustered flowers open up.

Pale purple irises. They stand

Their ground like Spartans in the heat,

While in the shade I fight a cramp

Suddenly seizing my right foot:

Potassium depletion, plus

A partly fallen arch. O Rome,

I now know how your ruins feel!

Cartilage once kept the peace between

Frontiers of bone. Not anymore.

Still, I’m grateful for this bench

Rotting so conveniently

Beneath an elm. I find a heart

Carved in the wood, a heart transfixed

By one of Cupid’s arrows. But

The lovers’ names have been destroyed,

Gouged down to human splinters in

A fit of jealous rage. Alone,

I see the vandal raise his knife,

Intending to eviscerate

All hearts within his reach. My hope

Is that the little psychopath

Makes no mark in History

Larger than this: a small reminder

Love fails us like the power. Sometimes,

Long periods of darkness descend.