for Ellen Voigt

 

Ned Gounce, the lobsterman next door,

rises into light. Dawn

at the wharf he rigs the Lady G, lads

floats and bait and gas, alone,

 

and churns east

past the lifting breakers to his traps.

Afternoons on his way home we meet him

outside the P.O. and nod

 

acknowledgement, careful

not to smile too long, or talk too much.

Beyond him on the right, an analyst from Beacon Hill

has bought Penobscot Beach

 

on contract.

Claims his clan

“simply loves it,”

has plans

 

to build next summer, “acres”

of glass. The villages

mistrust him. I give him two years,

more if he puts up curtains.

 

Sleeplessness

is the rule here, and vigilance;

summer burns off quickly, across 

these brown islands

 

crumbled in the stiff water this far north.

Among us

we have this in common:

midsummer days

 

double on the water’s metal,

too hard, too bright, too loud. Along the quay

even the shameless herring-gulls

scream softer. Early July,

 

the neighbors call it “lining the North,”

when the sun crosses under the 4-hour night

so high at the horizon you can follow

its red impulse underground

 

till dawn. Saturday we watched it,

finishing the Rolling Rock, and then the gin,

and arguing with good intent

till dawn. By the end,

 

a little irritable and

a little drunk, I said I like it.

said it was reasonably calm.

Under the pilings a red wave

 

bulged; collapsed; hissed in the shingles.

said that shining—faultless

as yellow glass, and singular,

and marvelously ordinary—could outlast

 

private human dangers.

Across the porch David thought a light

that old and endless made men strangers.

The long tide pulsed. I hated he was right.