Christina ~ May 7

 

Bryant Park, early May, nice day, I have an hour to kill before I go to Moynihan Station to get a train back up to Western Mass, everything about the park is perfect, the hundreds of pretty metal chairs and tables, the people from everywhere in the world, speaking every language, the fancy restaurants with tables outside at the back of the library, the large lawn in the center perfectly green, a sign saying stay off it since it’s newly seeded, and not one person walks on it, everyone protecting it, protecting the new green grass, the areas set aside for painting, for board games, for bocce ball, the merry go round, the excited teenagers running up to it, saying, It’s only $4, let’s do it! The crew of young Mexican men, one of them the foreman with a site plan, with a wheel barrel of cement, patching damaged areas of the walks, the families, the children, the young people sitting alone with their laptops, writing, working, engrossed, the young woman and her mother who ask if they can sit at my table, who tell me their story, that they’re originally from Bangladesh, that the daughter went to high school in Brooklyn, now lives in Portland, Oregon, in the neighborhood called Beaverton, (oh, I say, that’s where my sister lives!), the mother still in Brooklyn, out near Coney Island. I say to them, this park is what is good about the United States, it should be like this everywhere, people from everywhere in the world, happy, sharing this beautiful space. But, I add, of course it’s not.