At the Basin in the Luxembourg Garden by Alexandra Ernst

The sun is hot though it is September.

There are crêpes au chocolat to eat

with sweet remnants sticking

to small fingers and mouths.

Children shriek and splash each other in the basin.

A young couple embraces on the grass.

A newborn nurses in a pink sweater

once worn by his older sister.

Two weeks old and he is already here

in the middle of it all.

His mother sits cross-legged

in a summer dress on the moist sand,

as children pour water from buckets

all around her.

There are plastic containers

full of sand, presents for the mothers.

There are wet shirts and two girls even

wear their rinsed out underpants on their

heads as hats.

The gayness of the moment is

as certain as the fatigue which

will come at the end of it all.

I chase my crawling son

looking over the terrain

for anything he might stick

in his mouth or harm himself with.

I see the pigeon feathers and cigarette

butts, the pebbles and plastic toys

that are smaller than are safe.

This moment is part of millions of moments.

The sun is only a fraction of the sun.

That is all I have to say.

My poetry has appeared in various literary journals including IO MAGAZINE, THE MINETTA REVIEW, THE ANTHOLOGY OF NEW ENGLAND WRITERS and, most recently, in the May/June issue 2008 issue of ALL THINGS GIRL. Though I have lived in Paris for the past 18 years, I spend each summer hiking with my husband and two small children in the Adirondacks and in my home state of Vermont.