The View

 I often park to share the view of Drummore Bay,

the long hull-shape of Lee Island, the Phippsburg steeple in the distance. The island splits the bay

from the river. Which way the island seems to slide

against the current depends on the tide. At

ebb the bay becomes a mud flat, smooth

as trowled excrement. Seagulls stand stick-legged

on their slick reflection. Lee Island seemed to

flow up-stream, Squirrel Point towed behind.

Today the tide has filled the bay, on-shore wind

following. Lee Island seems to slip sea-ward. A

fisherman bends his oars as his skiff follows.

At flood the surface stills. the river’s current

slips sea-ward unseen. A yawl, working up

under power, will feel the current on its keel.

Morse Mt. Revisited

Morse Mt Revisited

The View

 I often park to share the view of Drummore Bay,

the long hull-shape of Lee Island, the Phippsburg 

steeple in the distance. The island splits the bay

from the river. Which way the island seems to slide

against the current depends on the tide. At

ebb the bay becomes a mud flat, smooth

as trowled excrement. Seagulls stand stick-legged

on their slick reflection. Lee Island seemed to

flow up-stream, Squirrel Point towed behind.

Today the tide has filled the bay, on-shore wind

following. Lee Island seems to slip sea-ward. A

fisherman bends his oars as his skiff follows.

At flood the surface stills. the river’s current

slips sea-ward unseen. A yawl, working up

under power, will feel the current on its keel.

Soviet Pilot Bing Loved

NOTE: It's been months since I visited my own blog. Parlty because of recovery from broken hip.  This poem fro my book, Sweeping The Sky.

    Soviet Pilet Being Loved

Didn't we ever lie back, our

arms, our legs outspread like wings

and rise to pleasure as some

comrade-lover-airman-officer was entering?

Of course we did — some of us — but

we began to feel

we should be flying, not

lying upside down

on the runway,

grounded again.

I found myself remembering

how I'd rolled to the right

and up under the bomber's belly,

my fighter's cannon and machine guns

pulsing. After he left

I borrowed a broom

and swept out the room.

(I still have a few copies on hand. The favorite of my own efforts.)

HAPPY NEW YEAR

  Happy Holidays

Time limps on between Christmas

and New Year, the news sharing 

daily retrospect and prediction so

luckily we hear less that's actually 

happening. I'm left remembering 

family meals as many others did.

Why no relatives of my parents 

at dinners like those so achingly 

described?  I start by remembering

all my grandparents dead. My father's

three sisters, married,  lived within

twenty miles. In my life I've met one.

Of my mother's relatives I've met 

only Anne, her older sister. I wonder

where all those aunts, uncles,.cousins 

were.  The temperature a record high,

I replant my living Christmas tree. 

I call out to the calm, unfrozen pond,

"Merry Christmas, Happy New Year

to everybody's Tiny Tim,  everywhere." 

Being Up to Date

December 19th

Two days before solecist the south-east sun

first appears above the crest of Poland Spring

Hill, the image of the tall water storage tank a

clearly shows as if a mystic monument set

by some shaman of the industrial age to mark

the south-most annual migration go the sun in

its roughly one-hundred thirty degree seasonal

arc — the clock-time seven thirty-five as I

stand naked about to dress in the new light

I'm barely feeling — in ten minutes I am

dressed ("decent" some call it) and the sun's

full disk is clear above the ridge of the hill,

a ridge fringed by dark pine and leafless oaks.

Already I'm impatient waiting for the sun

to rise from directly east of where I'll stand,

as I do now, across the still unfrozen pond.

My christmas tree is stand-in for a sun-dial.

MOVING IN

      Graffiti Slouches Toward Salem

Commuter Rail rattles toward Chelsea, Lynn,

Swampscott. It was in Ipswitch, north of Salem, 

Lionel Chute and son James switched nations, 

emigrating from Dedham, County Essex, in 1634. 

Along the tracks houses turn their backs. We 

pass junk-packed yards and storage sheds. On 

the right, in a ragged marsh, beds of cat-tails 

stand stiff in their washed-out winter shades. 

The train ducks beneath an overpass, rises, 

passing boarded second story glass windows.

Taggers with their spray cans, like busy dogs, 

have had their say on blank walls with cryptic

abstract designs — on walls above shore wrack 

left by social tides for art abhors a vacuum. 

(Lionel's great grandson, Thomas  moved to Maine in 1735.)