by John Dos Passos Coggin
I’m used to August clinging to my face like fish slime. Days seen through the yellow glass of
summer haze, and nights that my dog tries to expel in a heavy sigh. Today, Cape Cod has visited
the lower Potomac River; everything basks in the warmth and clarity of a new sun that hugs the
planet and then naps behind white clouds. A tern plunges into the waves, seizing silver minnows
and shuttling them up and away in a sleight of wings. A sailboat surges upriver, its crimson
spinnaker sculpted into sleek curves by a persistent blast of air from the east. A blue crab, a
Jimmy, paddles with its swimmerets through a wave browned by sediment. Today, I can see the
blue flames painted on Jimmy’s claws before he vanishes into the crypt of a crab pot.
John Dos Passos Coggin is a writer from the Chesapeake Bay region. His poetry has appeared in Pangyrus, Cathexis Northwest Press, and The Blue Mountain Review. He also co-manages the John Dos Passos literary estate.