“Monhegan Winds”
For Jim Guinness
Jim’s music
carries on its crest the day I first heard it
blowing west through the Barnacle’s door.
Listening again, listening each time
I see low-tide rocks, dozing mammoths
in their shag of amber kelp,
drifts of Kathy’s snow-in-summer
filling roadside gullies,
the bluest of island days.
This Sunday morning, months and miles inshore,
a carillon sends a hymn crosstown
through bare-limbed trees,
hoops, hibachis, picnic tables.
of littered and deserted yards.
By luck, I can name two places
my heart’s home,
one, this house, these rooms
where, wind, sail and skiff, Jim’s music
carries me close as I may come in life
to the ancients’ Blessed Isle.
Marjorie Mir