‘Boston Public Garden’ and Other Poetry by Mina Le

Boston Public Garden

On Boston Public Garden’s willowed shorebank,
two little girls are feeding ducks: they prance
from beak to beak, arms arcing past their foreheads
to farther thrust their crusts. They feel, perchance,

how full the cupboards of their lives are stocked:
so full they’re called to fling the doors wide open.
The charity of children’s soon unlocked;
they seem to say: ducks, take this as a token

of what we humans are at best, who built
this garden, footbridge, benches, willows, lake
that you might cool your plumes and eat your fill,
and we might give as much as oft we take.

Awaiting Hurricane Matthew

A-hundred-forty mile-per-hour winds
come torquing toward us in the dark tonight,
and all that we can do is wait. Nerves thin,
we flip through news with antsy appetite,

while talking heads predict historic havoc.
The power will be out for days; there will
be floods. Already roads are void of traffic
because we’re bunkering down, although it’s still

a half-day ’til it hits. That dark red swirl
on radar maps continues to advance
our way. We can’t yet know how it’ll unfurl.
We watch the sky. The palm fronds start to dance.

Mina Le is a native of Minneapolis, and received her B.A. at Harvard University and her M.D. at Harvard Medical School.  She works as a head and neck surgeon in south Florida.  Her poetry has appeared in Eureka Literary Magazine, The Road Not Taken, Snapdragon, Mezzo Cammin, and Whistling Shade, among other publications.  Read more at writingbyminale.com.