Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Who? Who? \ The People Of The Outer Shore


Nancy: Stories I heard, story tellers I knew, going as I will go. “What was her name?  A weasel you say, and a porcupine?  Up there where the roses grow in the cellar hole.” 



Who?  Who?


The last bit of debris
     melting into mold
the Black Monahka?
only a story now
     that corner
scared us some

The gone
     going, going
the Buds, and Little Buds
     and which was it
that walked to Eastport
     on the ice

Drunk old man
     hollerin’ at the door
dead drunk, Agnes, Aaaagnes
Fifty years here, there
     melting into one another

What was her name
     lived up on the hill
kept that weasel
ran up men’s pants legs
     tickled her some, didn’t it

Who?
     some come-from-away
lived here fifty years
     gone now



Alan:  Feuds and fights, village rivalries, sects and schisms, a new little grocery store starting up every time there’s a falling out – there’s less of this now, but it still flavors the place.



The People Of The Outer Shore


The people of the outer shore are not my people,
and the outer shore is not my shore:
shoreline of marsh and mudflat,
gray, worn ledge and shallow, tangled bays.

Theirs, they say, is a hammer of cliff and kelp bed,
dank fog forests, rollers in the storm.
And the people themselves are hard,
sharp and prone to squalls.

When they asked me to visit, I did not go.
On account of the rains, I said, though it was not true.
For the outer shore is not my shore, and those people are not my people,
and there is no meeting them half way.

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