Running Away Together

By Maxine W. Kumin b. 1925

It will be an island on strings

well out to sea and austere

bobbing as if at anchor

green with enormous fir trees

formal as telephone poles.

We will arrive there slowly

hand over hand without oars.

Last out, you will snip the fragile

umbilicus white as a beansprout

that sewed us into our diaries.

We will be two bleached hermits

at home in our patches and tears.

We will butter the sun with our wisdom.

Our days will be grapes on a trellis

perfectly oval and furred.

At night we will set our poems

adrift in ginger ale bottles

each with a clamshell rudder

each with a piggyback spider

waving them off by dogstar

and nothing will come from the mainland

to tell us who cares, who cares

and nothing will come of our lovelock

except as our two hearts go soft

and black as avocado pears.

Source: House Bridge Fountain Gate (Viking Press, 1975)

Biography

An enduring presence in American poetry, Maxine Kumin’s career has spanned over half a century. She has been the recipient of prestigious awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. She was the poetry consultant for the Library of Congress in 1981-1982, and has taught at many of the country’s most prestigious universities, including MIT, . . .

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