Page 74 - WCM Summer 2022

Ode To Maine
I praise your Millay, your E.B. White,
your first sun of day, your long winter night.
I praise your autumn-dazzleness, spring-battleness, pine-reachness, picnic-beachness, bottlebillness, strong-of-willness, underdoggedness, treefroggedness, morning-wakeness, I praise your perfect crystal-lakeness.
I praise your tropical ninety degreesing, chased by a full moon that’s nearly freezing. I praise your meadowmountainvalleyvast and the way your people love their past.
I praise the elegance of your Shaker chairs
and kids scrambling for pigs at your Fryeburg Fairs. I praise your Renys, with savings inestimable,
and the fiddlers that fiddle your summer festivals. Your writers are fierce and funny and flawless, from Stephen King to Gary Lawless.
I praise your painters’ fields and ponds,
and the dancing shadows of roadside fronds.
I praise your feisty octogenarians,
your Main Streets, your dirt roads,
and helpful librarians!
I praise Mt. Abram’s turquoise skies,
the same paintbrush streak on your dragonflies, your green so dark it’s nearly black,
the slicksilver flash of a salmon back,
the shiny red of your winterberries,
the pumpkins that house your garden fairies, the certain balance of a mountain cairn,
and the ruffled feathers of a great blue heron.
I praise your abundance: “Zucchini: free!”
and the soup kitchens feeding your poverty, the drip drip drop of a March icicle,
the nor’easter that blows in an April fickle, your stabbing pre-dawns of twenty below, and crocuses poking from crusty snow.
I praise your hilltop Field of Dreams,
your organic kale and your church-baked beans, your Bible quoters, your wallet voters, woodstove warming, black fly swarming,
your owl as he blinks his yellow eyes
as your frogs and peepers harmonize.
I praise your apples, sweet and sour.
I praise your noon and midnight hour. I praise your Yankee candlewax
and your ever-growing property tax.
I praise your rockiness,
your RedSockiness,
your tomato bisqueness, barbeque crispness,
hard work blisters, witchysisters, lady’s slippers, Allens sippers, your fiddleheads, the mossy beds where deer have lain,
your facts, your fictions, and mostly, Maine,
I praise your ornery contradictions.
I sing the praises of your native drummers, your Saracen bikers, banjo strummers, Speedway racers, and tree embracers.
Equally, I praise your wax, your wane,
your countless cunning cantankerous seasons. For all these reasons, I praise you Maine.
Lisa Moore
74
Arts, Entertainment, Adventure and More in Western Maine