You are reading an archived issue of Sleet Magazine. To return to the current issue, click here.

 

Sleetmagazine.com

Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011

Michael Blaine

Rush Hour
Wading Out (Rehoboth Bay)

Rush Hour

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.

Wading Out (Rehoboth Bay)

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.

top of page
to fiction
to poetry
to flash
to irregulars
to interview