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Contents | January/February 2004

More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly.
The Atlantic Monthly | January/February 2004
 
If Only

by John Balaban
 
 .....
 
Their cottage sat on a grassy bluff
weathered by salt spray, fogs, and rain
blowing off dunes and bleached logpiles
past tidal creeks seeping out to sea.

Cattails bobbed with red-wing blackbirds.
Sparrows clamored through wild-rose thickets.
Two dogs, spattered with sandy muck,
snoozed on the sunny porch steps.

Dinner simmered on the stove.
Pulling weeds in the garden, she smiled,
hearing his tires pop gravel and clamshells
at their rutted lane's long winding end.

The dogs leapt up, loped out to greet him.
This is how it should have been.

What do you think? Discuss this article in Post & Riposte.
John Balaban is a poet and translator whose books include Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems (1998) and Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry (2003).
Copyright © 2004 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; January/February 2004; If Only; Volume 293, No. 1; 60.
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