Solitaire

John Newlove
From:   Apology for Absence: Selected Poems 1962-1992. Erin, Ontario: Porcupine's Quill, 1993. p.94.

Then he ran away,
the forest going by him

like a motion picture
and the road slid

beneath his feet
until he stumbled in a ditch

beside a small meadow,
hardly a lawn,

with stiff green grass
tough as barb wire,

around an abandoned
plank shack inhabited

by rats, near a shallow
rocky river in the north

of nowhere, and stayed there
with nightmare

and pack rats and water
and wet chocolate bars and cigarettes

until an engine came
and took him back again.

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John Newlove's works copyright © to the Estate of John Newlove.