Escape. A Poem by M. A. Schaffner

through the brambles to the golf course

and beyond. A green pond beckons

with an iridescent sheen it can smell.
 
 
It moves past. A twisting wooded road

goes up and down between the farms

that surround the camps and lodges

and empty lots where someone planned

to spend a life and then forgot.
 
 
Mottled with bottles the pond lies

forlorn between the secret parties

that every teen knows all about

and the goose waddles through, sensing

a river past barbed wire fencing

where the rest of the flock awaits —
 
 
the ghosts of a past predating

the clipped wings and special diets,

the tube between its liver and its mouth.