Mike Dillon
A bend in an unfamiliar road.
The windshield smeared with afternoon rain.
The wipers almost kept up.
I glimpsed a moss-roofed cottage in the firs
on the other side of a creek.
An immaculate woodpile in a decomposing shed.
Pink buds scalloping the black tendrils
of a plum tree.
Out of some deep-well of memory
along an unfamiliar road
as the rain began to thicken.
No door you’ve opened
on this earth ever opened
to a fiery blue rectangle of ocean
framed by an open door
on the far wall where the salt breeze
sifted in while you stood before
a shelf devoted to the works
of Herman Melville.