Art in the Park

When the full moon falls from the sky

and the world goes dark, we do not see

the heron built from car parts lift off

from its display by the hot dog wagon to impale

the bright moon on its crankshaft bill, causing

the moon to deflate as the light seeps out,

or the ship made of twigs that sets sail

and catches the dishrag moon in its loose-knit

bow, or the wooden crab the size of a

Guernsey cow that seizes the blackness to scrabble

toward the crab dock and release the convicts

in the traps beneath, or the havoc this wreaks

for nearby condominiums, which quickly fill up

with crustaceans on the lam, or the consequences

this will have on the world banking and interest rates

as the mortgage-paying population is increasingly

pushed onto the streets by arthropods who like

dry martinis and big screen TV. As we pull

our sleeping bags tighter in our sandy beds

beneath the highway next to the sewer outfall,

we will never suspect that public art

was the cause. We will simply, in our ignorance

and superstition and aching need to find

a larger organizing principle in the Universe,

tell ourselves that the gods were against us, we’ve come

to the end of our line, it’s time to kill the babies

and let the audience go home.