Stephen Dunn and Mark Doty in Cape May

Sunrise over the jetty, Ocean City December 28, 2009

Join Peter Murphy and the winter prose and poetry crew in Cape May this month.  This teaching and writing series has grown over the years from an informal gathering to a recognized bit of literary sunshine in the frosty months.  Mark Doty's Golden Retrievals poem is still one of my favorites, but Stephen Dunn captures the wintry shore in the poem Walking the Marshland:

It was no place for the faithless,

so I felt a little odd

walking the marshland with my daughters,

Canada geese all around and the blue

herons just standing there;

safe, and the abundance of swans.

The girls liked saying the words,

gosling,

egret, whooping crane, and they liked

when I agreed. The casinos were a few miles

to the east.

I liked saying craps and croupier

and sometimes I wanted to be lost

in those bright

windowless ruins. It was April,

the gnats and black flies

weren't out yet.

The mosquitoes hadn't risen

from their stagnant pools to trouble

paradise and to give us

the great right to complain.

I loved these girls. The world

beyond Brigantine

awaited their beauty and beauty

is what others want to own.

I'd keep that

to myself. The obvious

was so sufficient just then.

Sandpiper. Red-wing

Blackbird. "Yes," I said.

But already we were near the end.

Praise refuge,

I thought. Praise whatever you can.

Keep writing,

Maureen