Tonight is our final night of vacation. Tomorrow we leave the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay to return to daily life and work in the more frenetic pace of Boston. Although the weather has been cool and rainy, we have had a lovely time with family here. Another little snapshot from vacation. Poetic license was taken. It was apple crisp we made, not apple pie, and the rain had stopped briefly when we went to the neighbor's yard to pick some apples.

Picking Apples in the Rain

We pace, follow the dogs from room to room.
Surprise! Mist stands on the doorstep,
waiting to be invited in. We abandon
a losing hand, half a bruised banana, a gimp

lanyard, knots like sweet corn bitten to the cob.
Osprey huddle in high perches, clinging
to damp nests for one last moon. The downspout
is a leaky metronome. A telephone rings

until we pick it up. The grandfather
clock clangs twice. The dogs comma
nose to tail. I drag the boys under a spitting
sky, shiver in vacation clothes.

The apple tree doesn't care it's wet;
pie will warm us from the inside out.

--LJ Cohen, 2007