image overflows id=post <div> bloc

Right. I’ve got an ‘icon’ image coded directly into a post with say an align=left attribute, AND a very short pseudo excerpt delimited with the <more> tag.
when displayed, the image flows out of it’s posts div and into the next posts header.
That is, the .post div only sets as high as needed to fit header/meta/post text.
Although I solved this with a min-height property for the .post identifier in my style sheet, the white space varied and the look is not ideal.
btw: my <img /> tag is wrapped in a <div></div> followed by a newline, which forces stock wordpress to NOT embed the image w/in a pair along with the text that follows.
Any elegant way to get the .post div to set its height to enclose the image?