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Lake Town

Submission for "Homecoming"

By Mark AlansonPublished 3 years ago 1 min read
3
Lake Town
Photo by Adib Harith Fadzilah on Unsplash

Standing in the gravel on the old orchard road

You can see the whole county

The shoreline jutting outward

And twisting inward

Endlessly

Enshrining the lakeside houses

With their walls of shining windows

And the pristine docks that stretch out into the shallows

I often thought

Who would leave such a place

But I left this place years ago

To busy among the creaks and rattles of an urban empire

I come back here sometimes

To stand along the roadside

And squint out against the glowing meridian

That was once an untold perimeter

To the dreams that were swept among these hills

To the aches that shifted anxiously

In my legs when I heard you speak

In the summer we would pile into your family’s cabin cruiser

And trace circles around the empty island

Whose overgrowth would pull the late sun

Into shadow

Like the evening when we hid under the fruit tree

Faces pressed close

Listening to the joyous cries darting among the rows

And I waited

Too long

Until I was sitting alone in the darkened thicket

Your family sold that boat

When the boys and girls no longer came back fill it

Or offered young arms to carry the sections of dock

From the shore each season

You left this place

And moved to a city where there was no water in sight

Only mountains to surround you in their boldness

And red earth to coat your bare feet

They say that millennia ago

All of this land was carved by glaciers

A long and crucial process

Pounding with unimaginable force

Each slope and curve

A surging momentum

Across time

To spread

The cool sand beneath our feet

And wrap us in a gentle cove

Of sweet smells and quiet tempers

Now

Standing in the gravel on the old orchard road

I stare far across the bays

From the cracks beside my eyes

Breathing deep the final moments

As the afterglow dims

And think

Who would leave such a place

Knowing that

In the morning I’ll be gone again.

love poems
3

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