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Picnic  

Wes Civilz

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What had seemed to be strawberry ice cream
was suddenly revealed to be the dreaded pink slime.
You may have seen pictures of it on-line.

But just as we began to scream at the pink slime,
it was seen, after all, to be just strawberry ice cream.
The orange clown had played a trick on us children.

*

Decades after that picnic, I, childless, wonder if I should
have children. But time skims forward over its filmy surface,
and I have never even lived with a woman.

I watch myself, in memory as a child, run clueless
and free around the green, hill-filled environment of
what could be any park, any city, any country, any time.

The picnic continues rapidly with fairly happy children
at Vincent Massey Park in Ottawa, Canada, 1989.
A boy whispers to, then hits, a girl.