While trolling the gift shop at the Mark Twain House in Hartford, Connecticut, earlier this summer, I found a table of books marked down to half price. Exercising nearly superhuman restraint, I only bought two titles, one of which was The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant. Near the end of the book, the following passage jumped out at me as something that might make a fair poem. Let me know what you think…
When Judy returned to the empty
house, she clapped her hands
at the pleasure of having it all
to herself again. She moved
her clothes back upstairs to the high
ceilings and windows she’d missed
all summer, and then strolled through the quiet
rooms, stopping in the library, where she emptied
the dregs of the Judge’s sherry into a crystal glass, put up
her feet, and watched the sunset
turn the harbor into a pink punch
bowl. The great clock ticked while
the gulls became black apostrophes
against the line of one endless lavender
cloud that stretched to the horizon.
– Anita Diamant, The Last Days of Dogtown, pp. 248-9 (2006 trade paper edition, Scribner 2005)
The Daily Compost 