Seward Park

           Go down Ranier Avenue through all those south-side neighborhoods nobody I know ever goes to like Mount Baker and Ranier Valley except maybe for Quartermania night at AMF Bowling where we pretend like Ian remembers us even though he’s always so frazzled, past the discount mattress place where we got our way too comfortable used bed, past the fast food places we haunted when we lived in that big house up on Beacon Hill with those wastes of people that made me doubt that people in Seattle were really people at all, past alllllll of that for what feels like forever and you hang a left on Orcas and there’s Seward Park, on a map looking like Popeye’s arm after he’s chugged a can of spinach, a fat peninsula sticking up and out into Lake Washington, 2.4 miles to walk all the way around it and we did walk all the way around it and it was mostly sunny and in the bay by the parking lot seagulls fought madly for Fritos or Doritos that these girls were throwing into the water and the ducks tried to get in on it too but they weren’t really feisty enough and we walked and then a kid on a bike wasn’t brave enough for a puddle and signs warned of Poison Ivy and all the bathrooms had pictures of a scary dude whose been assaulting girls and you should call the police if you see this man, and we walked and ate Starbursts out of my pocket and there were people fishing and we sat on a stony beach and it was almost hot enough to be really good and hot and there we planned a barbecue for later where we would eat chicken and asparagus and Easter Candy but we wouldn’t have enough charcoal and everyone would bring their own six pack and then we’d drink strong drinks at a Chinese Restaurant and talk about nothing, but that was for later and for now we walked and it was getting on 4 and we wondered how well we should clean up the apartment because it was a total mess but was there really time and then we saw something swimming in the water and everyone was excited but we couldn’t find where it came to shore and one kid said it was muskrat so I believed him and then we heard some knockin and it was definitely a wood-pecker but he was hiding from us real good and we never found him and then the car was nice and toasty from the sun, and that’s that.