PRAGUE SPRING

Watching Prague exiles
return in 1968
in the spring
captures freedom
in the matter
of scattering seed
to be planted later
when the sky admits rain
meeting a musician
in the Square
by sleep housed roads
full of stones
who asks me to play
violin if I could
spare the time
so he could bury
his grandmother
a Holocaust survivor
and a prisoner
of the regime
told me he had
a first good night of a dream
lost in symbols,signs,
ruins,shadows
orphaned as romanticism
and solitude
with plane trees taken down
below a childhood bridge
where Pavel played
and gained knowledge
known to the secret police
who showed up later
disguised with a valise
full of Pavel's data
with no explanation
for they have ways
to murder parables
in their arrival
without a provider
for our survival.