Written July 1, 2021

From the Kezar Pond to Saco Bay.
Old Orchard Beach to Bailey’s Island.
The land of my youth
The summer camp on Watchic Pond
Built by my grandfather.
An orphan
A logger
A frontline surgeon in WWI France.
A retreat from the horrors to Maine
With a nurse, my grandmother.
A noble woman from a 9th generation Maine family.

Gorham their refuge
They had a family
And moved to a huge farmhouse
In Westbrook
Under the shadow of the SD Warren papermill.

Cumberland County a land of tall pines.
My best friend Chaney.
He found a basket of dead puppies.
We threw them into Portland Harbor.
The tide took them to sea.

In 1960 Chaney drowned in Sebago.
He was only eight.
I never saw his gravestone.
My innocence destroyed by death.

Four years later
A big-breasted girl working at a drugstore counter asked,
“Will you walk me home?”
At 12
A walk was a walk.
I stuffed my Green Lantern comic
In my jean’s back pocket.
And drained my vanilla soda.
I accompanied the girl
Along the Presumpscot River
Past the paper mill.
No houses.
No voices.
Only the grinding of the wood saws a
Across the river
And the murmur of cars along Route 25.

We stood in the woods.
She lifted her dress over her head.
Her breasts rose as puff pillows.
I ran.
Running fast chased by her laughter.
Running to my grandmother’s house.
Running upstairs to a bedroom with sea murals
I lay in bed.
My innocence gone again.

In 1975 my grandmother passed away.
The camp sold.
The house on Main Street too.
Chaney’s family moved north.
I went south.
To New York.
A city of too few pines to soothe old ghosts
Of an exile from Cumberland County.
Maybe one day north again.
To Cumberland County my home.