Carolina Journal

Smoketrees line the roadside, still-bare beech and poplar

bouqueted with redbud and something rusty I can't name,

March's odd autumnals —

                                                                              

                                                                              One-church towns I'm glad

not to be from, split-log strip mall with a porch

where Claire's beauty shop shares a sign with "Antigues," where you study grace

in magazines, and when dad dies you rename the family diner

New York New York. Love is a means of travel, so you dye

the linens pink and swan-fold napkins, holding peony

in your mouth. Sundays drive out to watch the ferry

                                                                               drag its lace.

Coastward, Easter-colored clapboard,

the last generation's shanties hovering on narrow stilts

above the velour drift of tide plain (mink from a distance,

muskrat up close), a drowsy instrumental music,

flooded at dusk. Beside the bridge, smooth brow of pewter.

Island of saplings blackened like a framed-up house.