Prelude

conservation unheard of

all still progress then

modern conveniences

blossoming interstates

five screeching girls

we scramble up & run

roll, tumble down dunes

as if dunes were made

for childrens’ pleasure

Wellfleet by 1960

grown green with trees

well-built wood houses

no longer Thoreau’s

wind-swept desolation

Portuguese fishers in

Provincetown ample

proof of meaner lives

Rachel Carson at home

writing her book, seed

of her cancer inside

Rain

by Edward Thomas

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain

On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me

Remembering again that I shall die

And neither hear the rain or give it thanks

For washing me cleaner than I have been

Since I was born into this solitude.

Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:

But here I pray that none whom once I loved

Is dying tonight or lying still awake

Solitary, listening to the rain,

Either in pain or thus in sympathy

Helpless among the living and the dead,

Like a cold water among broken reeds,

Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,

Like me who have no love which this wild rain

Has not dissolved except the love of death,

If love it be towards what is perfect and

Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.