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At Savage River Lodge by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

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At Savage River Lodge    

Only the trees 
            are raining now—

the storm passed 
            through the forest 

like a night shiver 
            and was gone. 

Out of the dark and into it, the August sizzle of crickets.

 
Wrapped in a blanket, 
            I sit on the deck

of my one-room cabin. 
            Twenty yards away, yours. 

We're wise enough to know confinement sets us apart.

 
Earlier tonight, 
            we feasted a friend 

with other friends, the evening 
            ample and kind. 

I'm pensively 
            dizzy with it, and would 

probably have slipped into vague solitary considerations,

 
had you not turned on 
            a light in your cabin

its glow barely 
            visible through the low

branches of an oak. So I 
            quietly tiptoed closer 

to your window, bare footed 
            on gravel and grass,

and watched you be alone, not four feet away from me.


Everything you did 
            was unsurprising, familiar—

you already seemed 
            distant, self-contained.  

And I suddenly felt 
            I was no longer there, 

while you went about your life without me.  

 
What else was there 
            to do for me but to look 

away, and walk
            back into the dark?

Morning by Krista Lukas

/ Cliff / Leave a comment

The stillness, the radio’s news,
the scent of rain. My neighbor
bending to pick up his newspaper
in its orange plastic bag, tossed
on the step. The cars all
heading this way or that,
a fine spray beneath their wheels. Vapor
rising from sidewalks, and the light
of the eastern sun, slanting long, as if
there’s all the time in the world.

(Krista Lukas)

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