By CAMPBELL MCGRATH

We wanted to say goodbye to the world we knew 
so we drove the coastline north from Miami  
as far as we could go. It was a farewell tour, 
sure, but farewell to what? Not the ocean,  
looming daily out the right-hand window,  
not the water but what the water would erase.  
Farewell to Florida, nipped in the bud, cheeky 
and self-satisfied as a sun-worshipping infant— 
goodbye, little baby Florida, goodbye!  
Goodbye to Ocracoke and old Saint Simon, 
Virginia Beach and Fire Island, goodbye  
to all those literal-minded municipalities— 
Surf and Ocean and Atlantic Cities—tossed up 
like flotsam along that waterlogged littoral.  
Six weeks and thousands of meandering miles later 
we found ourselves at a picnic table outside  
the Chowder Hut in Meat Cove, Nova Scotia,  
where the final stretch of tire-rutted gravel  
gives up the ghost: end of the road, folks.