Hungry for Nostalgia
I saw it in a book about the seventies.
A picture of a man taking a picture.
He was holding a Kodak Instamatic
pointed at three children, all raising
ball gloves up in the air above their heads.
The click-blink of the flashbulb, leaving
you starry-eyed. Just pieces of the past.
Always the summers of childhood.
Long sunny days tumbling one into the next.
The low hum of the window fan at night.
Lightning bugs in the darkening fields.
A 1971 Ford pickup rolling up the dirt
lane in a cloud of diesel fumes and dust.
Pale lace curtains billowing outward in
the frenzied prelude to a thunderstorm.
*
Beth Dulin’s writing has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, Atlanta Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Gargoyle, Little Patuxent Review, New York Quarterly, and Wigleaf, among others. In March 2021, she was featured as Yes Poetry’s Poet of the Month. She is the winner of Eastern Shore Writers Association’s 2023 Crossroads Poetry & Microfiction Contest. She is the author and co-creator of Truce, a limited edition artists’ book, in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. She lives on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Visit her online: https://www.bethdulin.com/
