New England Diary

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It's a living

"She sits on a smoldering couch

reading labels from old tin cans,

the ground ground down

to dirt, hard as poured cement.

A crowd of fat white gulls

take mincing, oblique steps

around the couch, searching

for an orange rind, a crab claw....''

-- From "The Woman on the Dump,'' by Elizabeth Spires