Left Behind

The boy runs alone through Gramercy Park,

a cavalier showing off his brilliant swordplay.

He leaps over benches and flies around bushes;

his boots scuffed from games, his ascot loose from dreams.

The old gardener tends carefully to his plants,

a suspendered relic with a passion for poppies.

He grooms the grass and waters the willows;

his white hair still thick, his hands caked with grease.

Both are remnants of a far-off Great War,

one still young enough to stay, the other still old to go.

Left behind in Gramercy Park together alone,

a swashbuckling pirate and a patient horticulturalist.

Intertwining vines growing toward the Sun,

a child missing a daddy, a pap missing a son.

The friendship of two unlikely strangers,

Aristotle and Alexander, out to conquer the world.