Double Flee A

A poem I saw in the Atlantic Monthly:

Their cottage sat on a grassy bluff
weathered by salt spray, fogs, and rain
blowing off dunes and bleached logpiles
past tidal creeks seeping out to sea.

Cattails bobbed with red-winged blackbirds.
Sparrows clamored through wild-rose thickets.
Two dogs, spattered with sandy muck,
snoozed on the sunny porch steps.

Dinner simmered on the stove.
Pulling weeds in the garden, she smiled,
hearing his tires pop gravel and clamshells
as their rutted lane's long winding end.

The dogs leapt up, loped out to greet him.
This is how it should have been.

-John Balaban

This is like the beginning to a season in hell. You can explain a lot with the images that are absent, I guess it creates a sense of space within the writing.

posted by dale @ 6:16 PM