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after Robert Frost
Well I’ll be damned, the old man had it right.
An August day, the air was thick with flies,
and his beloved brook was really just
a streak of muck along the path. The woods
were cool and shady though, and gave
us respite from the sun and buzzing wings.
I risked a leap across but slapped
as if a bullfrog in the mud. It caked
up to my knees; I didn’t mind so much
but sat, the only one around, beneath
a gone-wild apple tree at noon;
I know, some kind of omen. There I scratched
some lines out in the dirt, long washed
away now, by the swollen, snow-melt brook.