Bursting baskets and bustling customers

do an early morning ritual of fliratatious dances

just a peek now and then with a toss of the head

to assure the place and quantity of the other

both holding the delicious jewels of many a garden

as varied and brilliant as the painter's palette

The black-capped young man was there, too

before him an easel open and standing tall

peering across the street at the favored cafe

a neighborhood flag to calm and to retreat

depending upon the color and jingle-count

of the money in such roaming restless pockets

But yet for some, the fashions choose the venue

a snobbish social stamp needed in a book of images

though faded, they are glorious to their own mirrors

and in this part of the city, oh-so haute couture

lest we forget the ladies who lunch over pink roses

and bargain in secret upon the frailty of the lilies

Fine poppy petals are the parchment paper of love

on which all mad florists sell their idyllic schemes

of ivy-covered cottages growing in the countryside

amid the ruminating hum of gathering bees

market dreamers know they track the dust of the city home

upon the soles of their tattered garden shoes