Roger Angell In Central Park

My wife was game to change
direction when I wondered
out loud if you were the man

on the bench in the sun
minding his own business
beneath a Mets cap, perhaps

contemplating yet another
major league season or
daffodils and Spanish bluebells

blooming on Cedar Hill
enjoying his solitude on a fine
spring morning much like my

long dead father glimpsed
moments before basking
shirt off in the Sheep Meadow

the sanctity of privacy
and nothing more
I tell myself, steering us  

across the 79th Street Traverse
toward the teeming refuge
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.