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Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011
Rush Hour
Wading Out (Rehoboth Bay)
I
Tractor headlights move
over metered fields
as the cool soil
spills
into the morning.
A farmer folds hardpan
into itself;
turns each furrow
with metal tines.
The whiteness of seagulls
follows the tractor discs,
both hungry and loud.
II
Rows of dent corn—
their silk topped ears
shy between
rolled leaf blades
that make daggers.
Another dry spell.
III
Between these two fields
on a straight highway
so many hurry on.
Barefoot, we shuffle
in the low light.
Wade through water
warm and not clear.
The darker umber just
below the surface.
Two bleach bottles
fixed in the distance
Mark home-
made traps
Two dented
wire boxes that
Promise crabs
and bull lips.
In our lazy wake
two bushel baskets
Stuck fast in inner tubes
await our offerings.
Our soles feel out
clam tops
Along the way
holding each
Cherry stone
with big toe before
Our torsos sink
below the surface
Then rise up
in the soft turbulence.
My adolescent hand holds
the clam's unseen body
Its hard shell firmly closed
but pulled from the silky muck.
Blue crabs up ahead
feast on happenstance
Unaware of the tepid,
steel harbinger
Convoking
them, too.
Michael Blaine teaches English at Laurel High School, adjunct at Delaware Technical and Community College, co-edits the Delaware Poetry Review, won the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize in 2005 for "Murmur", received a 2006 Delaware Fellowship of the Arts in Poetry, and was the founding editor of the Delmarva Review.