The Picnic

THE PICNIC

Early Saturday evening,
summer in Discovery Park,
two by two by two
they scampered over the lawns
loaded down
with chicken and fruit and rice krispie bars.

Three couples in tandem,
cackling in clumps,
all seated at one wooden table,
using a ripped-open white garbage sack
for a table cloth,
thick paper plates,
forks and bowls of plastic
and actual food
being passed back and forth
until all the goodies
were gone.

The men leaped up loudly
and raced
for the children's playground,
and the ladies were left
to tidy up and talk
about the men
in their forties
swinging wildly on truck tires,
sliding on their ample bellies
backwards
down stainless steel slides,
their deep husky voices carrying
across the infant's sand
to fall harmlessly
at the ladies' flat heels.

A breeze came up cold
off Puget Sound,
and everyone bundled up.
The tangerine sun began to set
behind the Olympics,
and for a long majestic moment
the jagged mountains seemed
higher and clearer and closer
than it was possible for them to be.

The Sound spread out below the bluff
deep ashen-green,
with numerous nautical miles across
to the first of the San Juans.
Superferries
like white insects
running deep in the water,
glided past Blake Island
through the Bremerton cut.
Yawls and yachts and sailboats
dotting the dark water
like dandruff,
scurried to avoid the sharp keel
of the Princess Marguerite
at full steam;
her flags and pennants fluttering parallel
to the jet-black column of smoke
pouring out of her short stacks.

A small group of thick-necked white clouds
hovered near Mt. Olympus;
with first their foreheads
and then their pants
catching fire
as the great Tangerine sank
into the invisible sea
that they all knew was there
a hundred miles beyond
the peaks and the peninsula.

The long walk back in the woods
was never languid
as the three pairs
traded faces.
Two of the men took point,
two of the women moved astern
while the couple in between
was pulled to and fro
like metal shavings
dancing with a pair of magnets.

A bush rabbit
feasting in the half light of a pale moon
could hear low voices
deep in the night,
moving steadily
towards the large parking lot,
empty now,
but for two small cars.

The six burst out of the trees,
arms linked like sky divers,
falling together
into the open space,
with everyone speaking
at once
about the magic of the evening.

They hugged each other
until they were exhausted,
and when they ran out of words,
doors slammed,
engines sputtered,
headlights bathed the bushes,
and soon only the faintest sound
of tiny tires
hung warmly
in the halcyon silence.


Glenn Buttkus 1987