Dusk, January 6, 2023
by Lucia Owen
Off-road lights on jeep roofs high beams on Ford 350’s and on one loaded pulp truck flash and flash and two guys in fluorescent yellow emergency vests wave at traffic stopped, backed up right lane left lane coming going, me too, halfway along the lake causeway trying to get home before dark through this lit-up confrontation where we all sit and rev and fume up here in the woods it has to be some new revolt to overthrow the socialist traffic system, rioters slinging chaos and vile bumper-sticker slogans at each other. Beside me in the open cove in the frozen lake mallard ducks are sliding off the ice into the water swimming in line to fluff waddle fluff waddle onto the road to cross it – at least fifty – and we stop honking so ducks may safely graze across the road where someone has put out corn.
Lucia Owen moved to western Maine to teach high school English over fifty years ago. Until his recent death she was the caregiver at home for her husband of almost forty-eight years. Her work has appeared in The Cafe Review, Rust & Moth, Please See Me, The Bellevue Literary Review, The Metaworker Literary Journal, Smoky Quartz, THINK, and The Healing Muse (Fall 2024) as well as in a number of anthologies. In her eighth decade she finds that reading and writing poetry help her keep on keeping on.