High Park and Eden

Sowing crumbling donuts on the pond water
I note one goose abandon the food before him
To peck at a crumb not offered.

And watching autumning squirrels,
I see sneak attack on brother's hoard,
Then caught, chattering maledictions.

And oddly I rejoiced.
We have not, after all, in Toronto, fallen so far
From the state of nature and the garden
Known to our first parents.

-- Stephen K. Roney