Into the Woods

First published in Greetings from Tent City: San Diego Poetry Annual 202324, San Diego, California: San Diego Entertainment + Arts Guild, 2024, page 93. Originally written in June of 2008.

spring’s leafing—

the sound and the fury

of the plantation creek

 

unused tracks—

on the poor part of town

the sun also rises

 

tourist surge—

photographing the old man

and the sea he watches

 

on the road

a young hitchhiker

with a sign to nowhere

 

the moon is down

below the fjord’s mountains—

a shackled caribou

 

cannery row—

the smell of wood and tar

and foreign t-shirt vendors

 

separation day—

a path disappears

into the Maine woods