In my city the public garden is green
with red tulips in geometric beds and swan boats
that paddle round the frog pond.
               4.50 a ride, kids under 3 free.
               (to get there on the T for you is 2 dollars and 40 cents)

Garden, we understand, signifies beauty, adjunct
to fortune and ease & earned through history,

for History, we’ve learned, is destiny
               written in time but written on parallel
               tracks like a railroad: one side ours
               the other yours.

Geometry teaches that two parallels can never intersect
and a triangle of two unequal angles makes
two unequal sides.

History pays dividends only to equals and you
aren’t.
                Your track’s a siding,
                your garden whatever survives.

Your trip to the public garden in my city
is 400 years and counting.
No way you can get here on the T.