My first childhood on Falmouth Foresides
And then the South Shore of Boston.
In 1976
I left for good.
New York bound,
Two years now
Yet I miss New England

The White Mountains
The Maine Coast
Old Orchard Beach,
Portland’s Eastern Promenade
The view on Mount Washington far to the west
The two old schooners rotting off Wicassett

Decaying river towns;
Lowell, Manchester, Saco, Chicopee, White River Junction
Beaches,
Nantasket, Wollaston, Horseneck Beach, Truro,
Cape Ann, Gloucester, Marblehead, the Beverly Salem Bridge
Lobstah, fried clams, Italian Sandwiches, and damned Chowdah.
From Lake Champlain across the Green Mountains
To the Connecticut River
Over the White Mountains
On the The Kancamagus Highway
Down to Newport and Across the Block Island.
New England. Oh New England.
Bridgeport, New Haven, New London.
We are not New York.

South of Boston

The Blue Hills
Swimming in the Quincy Quarries,
Tramping to the top of Chickatawbut
At 517 feet to the east
Big Blue to the west
635 feet.
Nothing taller from the Hudson to Mount Cadillac in Acadia
Just Blue Hill Tower
The hills of my youth
Of my teen years
Sex with Linda Imhoff
A decade my senior
Elegant, sleek, haute class.
Me
Eighteen atop Rattlesnake Hill.
Now no forests
No Fifteen generation trees
No stone farm walls
Tumbled by the frost
Bog ponds and swamps
My blood.
Forever New England.