A Sunday Afternoon Poem

Brackish

In my twenty-year dream
I am home that day
when you walk up the path
with a bushel of angry crabs, spitting.

Screen door swung open,
I am wiping my hands in the air,
flour sifting around.
I've just mixed our cake.

It is late July and our house
is half-done, as it always will be,
leaving me to smile in peace
at the chipped paint
on the floor of our wide front porch.
Relief in leaving things be.

This day is just like the rest
in the quiet acres of our life.
Your truck has its own groove
in our gravel driveway; it comes
and goes to the hardware or Cleb's farm,
always with a dog or two.

My cosmos and zinnias devour
the rusty tomato cages
we've yet replaced;
though you promise again
as you lean down to kiss me hello.

Only a morning away,
down at our brackish creek
with the dogs for company.
Yet you see me all over
again, as if years had 
melted before us.

~ Susie Middleton