Lucky Bones

Lassing Park

79 lassing park In the morning in all weather laughing at Maxx’s familiar bark Jeanne and I walk together to the Old Southeast and Lassing Park . . . I will arise and go now and go to Lassing Park . . . no that’s a different poem ‘with clay and wattles made’ . . . But Lassing Park is right In brightening dark past homes cocooned in mist and shade we rush to catch the sun lifting from Tampa Bay our daily doubloon from nature’s treasure chest A colony of ibises measures out the day pecking their marks four or five abreast below live oaks and latticed cabbage palms those featherdusters for the cobwebbed sky We turn north on Beach the birds ruffling the bay calm where dogs less calm yank uncombed owners Headlights burn through haze aiming early workers toward highways and coffee shops heavy eyes sliding sideways toward the hungry sun on its own appointed round Judge John M. Lassing counted his blessings peered into his heart and gave us his park All over the thirsty world its creatures turn toward water in health and joy in need in desperation Africa already drying America’s shores polluted by forces quick with false equations 80 Let’s praise our Lassing Parks save and praise them all: Vinoy Straub Poynter Pioneer Demens Landing Flora Wylie Elva Rouse Al Lang Soreno: just saying the names sheer pleasure: Gisella Kopsick Palm Arboretum! Elsewhere oil seeps under sullied beaches slurring the seabirds’ cries Smokestacks by Apollo Beach scrawl toxic messages in the sky blurring the sharp rectangles of Tampa’s towers until the air’s blown clean by gale or shower and our park’s long view can once again astound We can save our waterfront parks gods and the government willing Heed the wild green parrots’ squawk: No drilling! No drilling! No drilling! O Lassing mine O Lassing yours O Lassing ours forever! Its cedars hawthorn sweet bays pine preserve our civic health by opening their fragrant arms to birds of every feather: white brown black and mixed: our integrated wealth strolls along the margin of the bay We breathe the park’s green acres soothing water Our hearts rise with the tide with the golden trumpet tree honey-throated as a tipsy robin Wounds start to heal as joggers soldiers workers young and old pass on every side: Hey Hey! Good mornin’! Where you been? The world’s wide and good or could be: good as the gold that’s dusted on our parks by sun and wind 81 Through hurricanes of man and gods through kind and wicked weather— O Lassing mine O Lassing yours O Lassing ours forever— May St. Petersburg’s waterfront parks for all time shield our town . . . In the evening herons nest in oak trees bending toward the west and the moon and stars on their hallowed arc keep their nightly watch over Lassing Park ...