On Black Pond

...Wooden pegs for nightshirts, tee shirts, shorts, sun-thin curtains blousy as unattended jibs, just enough hip room for a lamp and book...

...This bed's too small for separate sleep, one ghost glance and we are thin-flanged greens in sleeves of smoke, sharp with the damp then fiery, limbstruck-rock oak, black gum, witch hazel, heath, sassafras, sweet vetch, bayberry, spruce- from here to the Atlantic our watchfires keep till wind raps the glass in the old sills and a mournful whinny calls us home from the scattershot brights to the lowly roof and orchard, red-right-returning with trawlers and fishermen, we make our way in, salt-resined and creased-loose limbed as wind with joy and lack of sleep...

...On Black Pond A small boat stutter-shims in light surf, rocks a bit but goes nowhere, so answerable to gesture and weight that one foot in the bow can send it heaving away- that is the way of our summer bed in the Truro cottage...

...Catherine Staples...