| LABRADOR For Fly Boy Across a little valley trembling on the edge and cut through by roads, the train makes its approach from the east, parallel to the coast. Field mice scatter into holes across the bluffs that lie along its path. A hunting hawk is startled, turns away. A dog is frozen on the tracks by fear, where people made boats for the sea, and sealed them by hand in a harbor of tar. The dog has been smelling the pitch where it bubbles in pools on the path to the beach; tar and eucalyptus, kelp and the clean salt air. He has crossed the tracks a thousand times, but never with the train so near. His man won't leave him there, the dog can't move so they die together in the pleading of brakes, as the driver's heart stops and turns to join the circling hawk. |
| Copyright 1999 by Kyle Kimberlin |
 |