Five o'clock skater (Boston Public Gardens)

For colors, he flies a tassel above a timeless cap. Hands stowed in pockets. Shirt tight as polliwogs'. His stormless sea reflects cliffs of windows to the sky. Alone inside his speed, he startles the swifts with click of his blades carving arcs across and across their pool of light. Silence listens and the horns recede. A scarf for his rudder. A moon for his star. His figure 8's smile at the sunset's fall. He's beyond this time and beyond this place. And now the phantom course loses its darting shadow to the dark. But five o'clock walkers all have seen a briefcase on the waning shore and, on the glassy tide, an errant spirit running free.