At The Door Of A Small House On An Old Cellar Hole On A June Night In Maine \ East Of The Light

Alan: To be centered in a place that feels right... what could be better?

At The Door Of A Small House On An Old Cellar Hole On A June Night In Maine

I would rather live

where I can hear the bullfrogs

a mile away up a silent road

and see ten thousand fireflies

doing their bugged-out strobe-dance

under a quarter moon

and shoo mosquitoes

so that the air near the roses

moves and scents the still night

than to be

     smarter

     better

     happier

     richer

anywhere else in this

sick old USA.

Nancy: Watching for whales as they pass through the East Quoddy channel is more accurately “listening for whales.”  The loud sound of their blow alerts you to scan the horizon.  Just as you find the exhaled cloud, they are into another dive.  Dive, feed on plankton, rise, blow, repeat.

East Of The Light

The whales say tchuf, tchuf,

hard, sharp,

and that’s all I know of whales,

tchuf, an eye,

flukes.

The islands behind the whales

are Wolves,

were wolves;

they will never catch the island called Moose.

The whales say tchuf

to me, tchuf;

I see the flukes, and then

nothing

nothing

nothing.

The whales are making love;

they are pursuing the naked sea butterflies;

the Wolves are tirelessly pursuing

the island called Moose.

The whales are eating the brilliant

red

and blue

naked sea butterflies; they are

making love.

Satiated,

they rise.

Tchuf.

I want, and do not want.

How would it be,

to swim to the east, east of the light,

breathing tso,

tso?

“East Of The Light” first appeared in Anthology Of Maine Women In The Arts (undated).