The Port Clyde General Store, temporarily located in the Monhegan Boat Line ticket office, is selling a variety of lovely Wyeth books!
Poetry
A CONCERT, IN MEMORY
A CONCERT, IN MEMORY They have gathered here, To listen and recall, A quartet of remaining friends, In her cove-side cottage, Once a summer home, Then her last, The sea, through its windows, A triptych. “A life,” the pianist, a great niece, says. She begins with Brahams’ Lullabye. Follows with Schman’s “Scenes from Childhood, An […]
The Monhegan Mail Boat
With boat bags and sunscreen the day-trippers ride. They’ve binoculars, cameras and charts for the tide. They point and exclaim…are excited and merry As they board the Mail-Boat…that small island ferry! It brings hikers and bikers and workers with tools… Boxes of books and equipment for schools… Tourists and artists and family and friends… Supplies […]
A Green Winter on Monhegan
Image by Barbara Hitchcock
The Selchie
THE SELCHIE An islander like themselves, they had seen her before, basking on the harbor rocks, swimming in this cove, home waters to them all. Now they see a stranger, a half-grown, slender girl, naked like themselves. She sits looking down at them as they play, cousins. friends since earliest times. Beside her lies the […]
ISLANDS
I am drawn to themin books, in memoryone much visited,small, habitable, easily traversed,remembered, rediscovered,the mingled smellsof sea and soil. They may rise upfrom the seabed of sleep,from restless origins,defiant cliffs transmuteto gentling foothills,village yards. Fixed in timeor changing hourly,weather always the onemost wished-for,the season chosen for its gifts,its special gifts: the silenced wood,the yielding soil, […]
A KEY FOUND FAR FROM ANY DOOR
A KEY FOUND FAR FROM ANY DOOR Look here, what I’ve found, half buried in the sand. What door is missing it? What room is waiting? Let’s choose the house where it belongs, find inside our favorite room. Let’s say it sits close by a rocky ledge just above this cove. A room one story […]
A SUMMER HAT
Woven from wild grasses, a cluster of wild flowers tucked in its band, a single gull feather worn aft: on a day shifting between summer’s end and fall’s beginning, we stand at the dock waving goodbye to parting friends when a sudden gust lifts the hat from your head, sends it, brim flapping, winging its […]
SUNDAY MORNING, OFF THE COAST OF MAINE – MARILYN RINGER
SUNDAY MORNING, OFF THE COAST OF MAINE The basement Laundromat is deserted I fill both machines, then head upstairs to the Black Duck for a scone and chai. I sit at the cribbage table, watch the day wander in. There is gypsy jazz playing, Django Reinhardt style, its foot-tapping rhythm contagious. Arline and Mo […]
Monhegan XVIII (Sunset)
by Kate Cheney Chappell MONHEGAN VILLANELLE When day descends the stair of sky And ribs of clouds exhale the light, The sea breathes deep as colors die. West bellows blow the embers high And dark-winged terns stitch flames in flight. When day descends the stair of sky, She walks the stones where wild tongues lie, […]
NACE EL FUEGO
NACE EL FUEGO ~After reading “It Is Born,” by Pablo Neruda I have consulted his poems about the sea to dampen the dust of my dry yearning, but even here a fire is born. I am left thirsty for blue, for air whetted with salt. Where is the hidden cove with its sea glass treasures, […]
WINTER ON ISLAND – BONNIE ENES
WINTER ON ISLAND Wicked cold day. An afternoon walk with the dogs down to the dock where buffleheads, like bath toys, teeter on waves. Distant islands are in mirage. If only I could sense summer– whiff of salt, touch of hand to warm rock or to stand in the middle of a cloudless aquamarine summer […]
Mnemonic by Marjorie Mir
MNEMONIC “Fall back,” we tell ourselves, beginning the trek toward early dark, and we do, still do, coming from cold streets into lamplight, cupping a mug in both hands; limits, the comfort of habit, these are not yet taken from us, nor a darkness whose face is familial, winter that closes us in. Marjorie […]