The Monday Wanderer by David Leighton Beard

She only wanders out on Mondays, long after the buses have shipped the little ones to school,
long after the rush hour to the offices.
One can often see her strolling the park,
passing between the beech and maple trees,
often stopping at the monuments to gaze at the lions.
Out on its main lawn are free parties that last long into the summer,
but she is never there.
Like Garbo, she is hidden, demure, her ethereal features covered by a sun hat,
adorned like a delicate flower in shades of fuchsia and magenta.
Her skin is marble, smooth, unflinching, unwavering, and statuesque...it appears, with each passing week,
that she may one day soon become absorbed into the monuments themselves,
living another existence, void of sound and movement.
She is a mystery, this Monday wanderer.
With the park her only refuge and her hat her only shelter, she stays long into the evening,
until the last sprinkles of sun have dripped from the branches of the maples, and then, like a dissolving spirit,
is gone, off to somewhere hidden, demure, and ethereal.

Art by Gabriela Cavallaro