As part of a collaboration put together by the Poetry Barn and the Arts Society of Kingston (NY), several visual artists interpreted the work of several poets.  Artist Pam Krimsky selected and illustrated Caprice Garvin’s poem, Friendship Park. Poem and painting were exhibited at ASK’s gallery in August 2021.

Below is a detail from the painting At The Border (Acrylic and Canvas), by Pam Krimsky, followed by the poem Friendship Park, by Caprice Garvin.

Friendship Park

On this plaza

bordering

San Diego and Tijuana,

A mother and daughter

Touch fingertips

Through thick steel mesh.

A rustling, like ribbons

Windblown from a child’s hair,

Storms up the bars,

Confounding the wall’s height.

Trash undone

By festival-goers hands,

Rises as kites.

The child doesn’t turn

To see carton

Feather into a bird

But sees flight

In her mother’s eyes

And believes it real.

She asks for wings, planes,

A swing to swing

That high.

The steel catches

The light of the sun,

Becomes a river on a kite’s tail,

Saturates the air

With the sound of fingertips

Brushing, like palm leaves,

The underside of grace.

Located within the Border Field State Park in California’s San Diego county, the half-acre Friendship Park includes a section of the border fence that divides the US and Mexico.  On the US side, the park was formerly part of the Monument Mesa picnic area, but is now under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security and is heavily monitored by U.S. Border Patrols.

Friendship Park, by Caprice Garvin, was first published as Indolent Books WHAT ROUGH BEAST | POEM FOR DECEMBER 25, 2018, edited by Michael Broder