Tourists?

Kip Zegers

From behind the counter in Orleans, she asks,
"Do you guys know Fort Hill?" Then,
serving us coffee, "... it's my favorite,
shows me the seasons. We hide things there,
for us, it's all about being found." Her words
were a gift, and a glimpse inside. 

Next day, at Fort Hill for the last time that year,
I faced the blank Atlantic, the intense
geometry of marsh, a wide meadow
gone to the brown season of rest,
and the unelastic sky above Cape Cod,
and I wanted something more. When I looked
I found it easily, between tree roots, 
plastic figures a few inches tall,
all waiting, set in a semi-circle,
at its center a folded paper I did not open,
a scene waiting to be found, by "us," she'd said.
Not me. I was ashamed. I started the car. 

Across the road, the hugest of trees, fallen
in years back, was still there across the lawn
and into the field beyond. I was pleased
to see it becoming permanent, and pulling away
I heard a small voice ask, "will she who posed us
out here, come back? Are we alone?" The answer
if it came as a second little voice, was lost,
I was so quickly out of range.

---

Kip Zegers
Kip Zegers is from Chicago, educated at John Carroll University, Northwestern University, and Union Theological Seminary. He applied for, received Conscientious Objector status, and did alternate service from 1969-71. He then began to work with poetry. He has published four full length volumes and six chapbooks, most recently The Poet of Schools, Dos Madres Press, 2013, The Pond in Room 318, Dos Madres, 2015, and A Room in the House of Time, Dos Madres Press, 2020. He later trained as a teacher at Hunter College (CUNY), and began teaching at Hunter College H. S., a public high school for gifted students, in 1984. Retired in 2017, he works with writers at New York Hospital Community Outreach and SAGE.