June Poetry, Week 1

This first week of June the poems are all located on Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine (Port Clyde). I spent a week there with four members of my poetry group, the High Tide Poets. One huge learning came about there: the word for where sky and sea meet is NOT horizon, it is offing. You will find that referenced here.

June Poetry, Week 1

Day 1

Monhegan #1

There is chop on the water, a high breeze

and surf bawdy against the hull. 

The mail for Monhegan is strapped 

to the deck in a Rubbermaid tub: bills, 

maybe a few billets doux 

from a soldier serving in Kabul

to his beloved, local girl dreaming 

of getting away from the snuggery of island life.

Tourists with too many bags

teeter on the ramp in city shoes, hope 

for something primal, maybe an artifact 

from the shipwreck of the Sheridan 

at Lobster Cove. The man in the red ball cap, 

camera lens longer than his forearm, leaps 

to capture the eagle fishing off starboard, loses 

his shoe over the side. It’s not real life, it’s bird life. 

Day 2

Monhegan # 1.5 

Cottage

Long trudge up a rutty road

or a hitch from the luggage truck,

red velvet cat on the tv cabinet —

left behind from last season.

Romantically cut the veggies 

for chowda, lost thyme discovered 

in a bag within a bag just in time to season, 

haddock, celery — just the right amount of cream

et voila!

dueling poems in a cottage by the sea —

how long does it take 

an email to fly from one side 

of the room to the other? With a whoosh

it goes, ricocheting off the sky light,

zeroing in on the leather divan, near miss

of the lamp and clock 

et voila!

We need ginger beer and coffee filters,

need running water in the tub,

and bread for toast (at $6 a loaf —

we don’t care) The needy don’t care

the cost of a hitch to the store or crusty loaves.

We need to work on poems today, 

get a good line from somewhere, 

from a cedar waxwing’s throat will do.

et voila!

from the open window, a six-pack of notes.

Day 3

Monhegan #2

Bird chatter in the brush, the horse

chestnut, fog horn bleating against the sky,

a cough from downstairs

where she tries to sleep off the incident,

the race of her engine against her chest wall.

Sounds of island life do the job, calm

seas know to lie flat against the offing

tonight when what she needs is revved

up like her own body, a counterpoint.

Over the trees, an eagle with a message:

this is the way poetry happens sometimes,

with a clatter of muscle against bone — or with a sigh.

Day 4

Monhegan #3

... somewhere a bird 

who is bound he'll be heard,

is throwing his heart at the sky!

— partial lyrics from State Fair, 1945

Somewhere in the dark, a charm of finches

huddles in the snuggery of branches still wet

from fog that slid in and out all day

like a promise. Sunlight has given up,

shied from every hollow where at noon

it took up the songs thrown at the sky,

echoing melodies off every erratic boulder. 

If you look now, no matter how you squeeze

your eyes against the shadows, 

you will not find them. No matter how

you cup your ear, you will not discover

their night language, hear stories

they spin from beak to beak. It’s a grand 

and hushed burlesque played out in the dark.

Day 5

Monhegan #4

The Monhegan Sky

is fickle, sometimes purple-black as a bruise, 

shapeshifting into storm-grey. Just yesterday

it went into hiding behind Oz’s smoky curtain,

pulling the levers, making sharp

sizzles of light over Port Clyde. 

Duck and cover, hide 

under the schoolhouse desks,

wait for the zap of incandescents

overhead, bare as babies. Peek

through your fingers, watch the filaments

curl to ash as smoke fill the bulbs. 

On a morning like this, blue and tight

against the offing, it seduces us from sleep,

calls us by the names we only dream of.

Day 6

Monhegan #5

38 chickens have run of the place, Jamie Wyeth’s 

Wet Dream no longer anchored here, the Hermit

no longer on Manana, pestery foxes eradicated 

in early 1900s, a coon cat is pals with the black hen 

down the road by Carina’s. On the rutty drive 

to the Murdock House, a Tardis doubles as a garden shed. 

Waxwings swish into the trees, disappear of a sudden 

like chameleons, their songs trilling from every leaf. 

Gladness is in the air, and everywhere you look is island. 

A one-legged pink plastic flamingo

keeps his stance over the rhubarb; at night, up on Lookout,

a flash of white light that turns and turns in the fog.

Day 7

Monhegan #6

Island Traffic

Geese vee overhead, honk

like interstate rushers,

19 Manana goats amble 

like Saturday gamboling at a picnic.

On Monhegan, the rule is

no cars, so only beater trucks

down at the dock to scoop

tourist bags, haul supplies

to the Black Duck or Carina’s:

ginger brew, wine, peanut butter jars

from Port Clyde. So much island

made: lemon verbena soap, ice cream,

so much trouble to keep the place

clear of debris, recycle, take trash, 

dog poop away on the Laura B

when she leaves for Port Clyde.

Island paths unpaved save by feet

in Keens or Bean boots, Birkenstocks,

watch out for the beaters heading

back to the dock with outflow luggage.

Geese vee overhead, waxwings retreat

into the trees, Manana nubiles graze

and race each other to the edge, bleat

hello or farewell to Island traffic.