It was in none of these places we joked about a tower of towels.

What distinguishes whether one is in or at a park, and if the same distinguishes whether two, is a cognitive matter where memory might pamper itself as baby wipes buried in a bag for mudletting.

His pristine hands, a flesh chapel hid behind the scaffolding of open-fingered gloves. And neither of our feet on pedals.

At home, a flat tire keeps him there. Rosy-red fingers smashed in chrome.

Not At Home collects three parks in one name. Singly called The First Below Zero Night, Sludge, and Where Ice Splices Throats to Laughter.

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There are many steps for stepping through a park.

Ours include: airplane, taxi, metro, knees picking up their marionette feet and performing leisurely with little applause. The way snow comes down. A chin dipping to a chest to close the busy drawbridge under which warmth rushes.

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Rails attempt to ease the tension between ice and humans.

My hand lodges like a splinter in the grove.

To learn how to walk through, we walk through and through. The rail is for people who are not parks. Binoculars for those not birds.

My hand acts a splinter on the rail. His does not.

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Billed at the top of a hill are mirrors built as a maze that bullies reflections.

In this one, he is an entire blade of grass a camera lens plays like a bee toward and zooms. A mirror is a park where light picnics. Where light dines on refraction.

In my favorite, he holds his mouth open as a luxury bus window, and I construe his teeth a caravan because they are still the way a gaze.

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To write about parks the way he walks through them. To stalk his walking through the scrawny page park I pen.

About parks, about parks, about parks, I write, park, parked, will park, I write, furiously, and with homage.

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We mill around with mulled wine warming our hands. We pass on benches. We pass our gloved hands in one pocket then the next then the other’s and the other’s other.

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Snow erases mud our feet rewrite. Snow and mud and our feet. Slipping, we separate like a colon’s parts between numbers on a digital clock we have set for this occasion.