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POEM: Maple Leaf

Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.

I wrote this over the weekend on the train from Albany, NY, to Rochester, NY.

Photo (c) 2008, Brian Cameron
Photo (c) 2008, Brian Cameron

Maple Leaf

ice flows on the canal
and I flow the opposite way,
bound west on two steel lines
toward my old not-home

now the water is a river
filled with half-wild islands
and on each piece of snowy ground,
a flock of waiting birds

Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse —
ancient and exotic names
they have turned their backs
on the water and rails

further on now through fields
where sparse grasses and weeds
poke up through the snow
like drowning men’s fingertips

blowing snow, fog-like
makes of the rail line a dream sequence
empty nests wedged in tree limbs
empty factories with no hope of spring

for an instant, beside the tracks,
two men with rifles search the trees for prey
while nearby an empty backyard
where an empty swing set sways

Published in Audio Poems My poems Poetry Travel

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