The kids’ play area, primary-colored chunks
of polyethylene: swings and slides
and climbing cubes and overturned tricycles
all still and dripping in a pale March rain
and stretching beyond the chain-link perimeter
walls and walls of graying pine-scrub forest
(where rabid animals stalked last summer)
dissolving up to a low ridge, where it’s said
to be less than a mile beyond to the nice beach
that no one from here ever goes to
and beyond that, the slate-flat, indifferent sea.
Robbie Gamble is a nurse practitioner working with homeless families and individuals in the greater Boston area. He is presently working on an MFA in poetry at Lesley University. He has been published courtesy of Main Street Rag, Wilderness House Literary Review, Ibbetson Street and Modern Haiku.
A Quiet Courage 