Refuge

BY FRANK BOSCOE

We moved to Camden the year

every rainstorm came with a name

Like unfamiliar neighbors

plucked from the Herald obituaries

Larry, Elsa, Ida

Pausing here briefly, on their way out to sea

Flooding our basement

which is how the photos surfaced

as we careened to save everything

Photos taken at the turn of twenty-one

in a summer dress, in a forest

grainy, edgy, indistinct

Photos that deserve a gallery

or at least a                   page

in a special-edition book

Not pressed into a portfolio

for most of a lifetime

And save them we did!

Gratefully unharmed

shielded by keepsakes

accrued over decades

I know not the photographer,

the setting nor the scene

To know would break the spell

of those fraught, frantic years

before our eyes met

We spread everything out

on the sun-baked asphalt

of our one-block, one-way street

(good weather never comes with a name)

A fast-moving car could have blown it all away

were there any room to pick up speed

after Refuge, David Graeme Baker

text after From Before (Feather), Sal Taylor Kydd

Frank Boscoe is a Camden resident who is working on hiking every trail segment in Camden Hills State Park. His son Keenan is the proprietor of Topo Gallery just down the block.