Spring Flood

This poem appears in the Summer 2019 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

The torrent swept away the hunting cabin
That he’d spent every weekend on—it took
Him seven years—and piled the wreckage up
Against the Route 9 bridge for all to see
(They’d know it by his trademark bright blue door).
Somehow, he blamed this on her lack of care.

To hold his anger back, she thought so too.
What her friend said—a flood’s not caused by lack
Of anything—she knew. But knowing never
Made it safe to keep a home together
Along the dirt road where it got dark early
In shadows under Glastonbury Mountain.

Founded in 1957 by the great Russell Kirk, Modern Age is the forum for stimulating debate and discussion of the most important ideas of concern to conservatives of all stripes. It plays a vital role in these contentious, confusing times by applying timeless principles to the specific conditions and crises of our age—to what Kirk, in the inaugural issue, called “the great moral and social and political and economic and literary questions of the hour.”