Running Away Together

By Maxine Kumin

It will be an island on strings

well out to sea and austere

bobbing as if at anchor

green with enormous fir trees

formal as telephone poles.

We will arrive there slowly

hand over hand without oars.

Last out, you will snip the fragile

umbilicus white as a beansprout

that sewed us into our diaries.

We will be two bleached hermits

at home in our patches and tears.

We will butter the sun with our wisdom.

Our days will be grapes on a trellis

perfectly oval and furred.

At night we will set our poems

adrift in ginger ale bottles

each with a clamshell rudder

each with a piggyback spider

waving them off by dogstar

and nothing will come from the mainland

to tell us who cares, who cares

and nothing will come of our lovelock

except as our two hearts go soft

and black as avocado pears.

Copyright Credit: Maxine Kumin, “Running Away Together” from House Bridge Fountain Gate (New York: Viking Press, 1975). Copyright © 1975 by Maxine Kumin. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Source: House Bridge Fountain Gate (Viking Press, 1975)