The taunting pink pussy caps were everywhere
even before I went in the station to get on the train
and once I got on the car there was a baby in a backpack jacket infant jowl
pink cheeks on navy blue garment little big baby head looking around pool pond eyes
that started me to croon way down in solar plexus overtones like elephant rumbling
or silver back gorilla alpha male humming the whole car so calm so secure I was able
to go out in midst massive crowd trampling ever outwards ever onwards ever inwards
I drew this massive labyrinth amidst all those feet, ankles, legs line by line with little kids
coming up to run the lines even before they were done begging for pieces of chalk to draw
at edges of what I’d done the biggest labyrinth I’d yet made flowering out from petals
blossoming from germ center where I can see, actually visualize, Notre Dame, Our Lady
growing outward like Gothic Cathedral towering upward with Dark Ages all around hovering
as backdrop just behind with Black Death, Inquisition, and Crusades as 4 Horseman Battalions
parading all about as I stoop down in my labyrinth redoubt a rainbow of chalk where children
curve by the lines of my All One Thing World at this transcendental arc (Emerson and Thoreau?)
beneath bending sky over rippling pavement between grass so green in winter, in January
when all these people have been brought together in Love (reacting to hate?) on the Common.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.