POETRY: Mud Season

Heart, unquiet thing,
I don’t want to hate anymore. I want love
to trample through my arms again. – Henri Cole

I don’t know what happened to John
after the night he tried to return, bereft,
crying, “I don’t have what other people have,” and I
made him leave, nonetheless.

We tramped the Adirondacks,
Maureen between us on little legs
to the rotting mink traps near Uncas
under a snowy moon.

She tore off her clothes that same year
we hit the Pacific coast, exiled
from home in Raquette Lake –“In or out,”
we were told by the locals.

Chose 3,000 miles away instead of stuck
in wilderness—six unpassable miles became our road.
Mud season starts. Mohegan Lake stops
its freeze-groan.

We decided then to have Drew—Maureen nude,
waving a stalk of beach grass over pebbled sand,
running ahead like a white flag—in surrender
to California’s icy shore.

These days she likes her water warm.
I left love at a fork. “If you don’t leave, I’ll call the police.”
Wheat from chaff, and always too much chaff—
children, by far, the best piece.