Dreams by Jan Chronister

–After “Invisible Fish”

My granddaughter paints koi,
bodies so realistic
I can feel their weight.
Submerged in watercolor depths
are a lock and key.

Does she know her parents
attached a padlock
to the Pont des Arts in Paris,
tossed the key in the Seine
along with thousands of other
sweethearts, the metal weight
once estimated at forty-five tons?

My granddaughter
graduates next May.
We hope to be there,
but life has become
a bridge so encumbered by locks
it threatens to collapse.

Albuquerque might as well be Paris.