Two Years in Maine

David Vella

I live here in Vacationland
Among the antiques and the clams.
The heron stretch out in the twilight
silbouetted in my skylight.

The Kennebec between steep ridges

Is spanned by aging green steel bridges.
Meets four friends in Merry Bay
And floats proud Bath's new ships away.

A lighthouse beam cuts through the fog,

Illuminates a fallen log.
By chance a driftwood clump it reaches
And shadows dance deserted beaches.

Where September has its sinus aches

Its backyard sales and lobsterbakes.
Where red-faced men upon the waters
Come ashore and greet their daughters.

With canoeing trips and county fairs,

and traffic to make a bishop swear.
That's just until the tourists go,
Then nothing's left but wind and snow.

The previous poem is a condensed version of a rather long ode to New England which I wrote in 1988 after having lived in Maine for two years while teaching at Bowdoin College. The condensed version appeared in print in Treasured Poems of America, published by the Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum in 1989. (Don't be fooled - this is one of those "vanity" publications. I am hardly a real poet, as should be evident from the above bit of doggerel.)

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