BLUEBERRY HILL

Out of That Squalid City
Oh, we share that dream. You were a
young lady in a linen dress growing up
in light, white-washed days in Maine, a tom-
boy, probably; closer somehow to earth and sea,
left behind. And I, wanting to be out of this
squalid city, there; and seeing in your briny
gray hair, child frame bent with years of Northeaster,
one cocky, impulsive, hardy. Picking blueberries,  shopping
the oyster houses, walking the docks. Burnished
and bending, only, in that blustery weather,
a sea grass, plentiful, indestructible, there.
I’d like to go back to that place in mind, too.
I’d walk in the sea breeze.
I’d like you to come, too.
We’d pick blueberries together.

Leonard Eskowitz