Dreamscape

Island Winter, Gotts Island, Maine — Photo by Jordan Chalfont

Through the crusted, windswept snow,
grasses, like rough stubble, show
pale remainders under the hard grey sky,
standing for something gone long ago.
Dark woods and ice-rimmed stone
border empty roads.
A shuttered farmhouse,
white trimmed once,
gone to grey,
yellow clapboards, sun-bleached and peeling.
Beyond the wave carved shoreline, the sea,
restless, streaked with white, reaches,
gun-metal bright, to the horizon.
No marks, no heading.
Never been here before
though it feels my feet know this stretch of road.
Going towards or leaving, hard to say,
maybe never left.