These poems by Mainers appeared in “Notes from an Open Book,” a monthly e-newsletter of the Maine Humanities Council.
SMELT SHACKS
By Joseph Coleman
The frost-heaved road lined
with cord on cord of wood
weaved down to River Bend Smelt-
Camps. The office had a roaring fire;
sixty dollars to fish the tide
in a little tin smelt shack.
An old man held out two packets
of bait; sea-worms sprinkled with seaweed
rolled loosely in wet mud-
stained paper towels.
“The key,” hacked a toothless woman
hunched in a corner, taking deep drags
off a Doral Gold, “is to cut the bait
into tiny pieces; change
the bait when the bait turns white;
change the bait, that’s the key!”
Ignoring her, the old man said,
“Start with two turns up from
the bottom and stagger the lines.
Try one six feet below the ice.
Did you bring a knife to cut the bait?”
“The key is to change the bait,”
the old fish hag cackled.
“Change the bait, change the bait!”
echoed from her corner as we made
our way out onto the ice.
A row of twelve smelt shacks,
with steep peaked tin roofs
and walls of torn black tarpaper,
followed the natural
bend of the river.
At the base of each shack,
hay bales, cut in the golden salt
marshes of late summer,
rotted into relentless mood
shifts of the ice. Pulsing
inside each shack, rusted iron
wood stoves crackled hot
with dry white pine and beech.
Each side of the floor had a trough
of open water, emerald-green
water, like the brackish
water off Porters Landing
in summer – diving deep into
cold black, arching spines
to a sun-shafted surface….
Hung above each trough, a row
of six strings and sharp hooks
wrapped neatly around wooden pegs.
I cut the bait.
Not your dignified earthworms
used for catching brook trout
in the excited waters of early spring,
but filthy mud-worms
from the flats,
with hundreds of squirming legs.
The rusty knife the old man
lent me tore them into small
chunks, squirting blood everywhere.
I baited the tiny hooks,
staggering each one
with different turns
on the pegs.
Drunk men down the way yelled
“Smelts! Smelts on! Smelts on!
they’re runnin’ boys! They’re runnin’!”
followed by hoots and yelps….
but there were no smelts running,
there was no action, there was nothing
but deep booms and moans
from under an aching ice,
bruised ice heaving
from a rising tide,
anxious ice from a nervous
breakup of a tilting earth.
ALLEGIANCE
By Karen Spitfire
I tried to lie on the crumbly
red granite of Passamaquoddy Bay
to listen, to join the great flowing
currents, rip tides, whirlpools,
to embrace the St. Croix,
Cobscook, reversing falls
lean into the curves thru Sipayik,
longed to paddle the grand lakes,
around Motahkomikuk, Spedneck,
undo the arbitrary lines
between homelands.
But the pink granite of Penobscot Bay,
the resonant slow thunk
pulled me back to the high rounded nubs
leapfrogging across it, Schoodic,
Cadillac, Megunticook, my hips
molding more easily around the
archipelago protecting the Passagassawaukeag,
Naskeag and Brooklin, my blade
recognizing the Upper West Branch rills,
Chesuncook, and the long flow
out to Isle au Haut.
DREAM 1
By Kifah Abdulla
I dreamt of a small window
Through it flows clean air
Looking over a blue sky
White clouds travel through it
Flocks of birds pass by like air
I dreamt of a small window
The size of my hand
Overlooking a sea
My eyes travel in it
Into distant waves of blue
The yellow sun comes
Awakening the morning
And the night comes, inlaid with light
A window into which the snow whispers
Suspend in it, the moon and the rain
Into it flow the colors of autumn
And in spring, the fragrant buds
A small window, in which I count
My mornings and my evenings
Nesting in it are my memories
I cultivate in it lush dreams
I dreamt of a small window
The size of my hand
I look from it to see my sweetheart
When she comes from afar
She waves to me
That she is coming soon,
Carrying between the folds of her heart
Happy news
A small window overlooking
Onto the rest of a new age
I dreamt in a place where
My one and only dream was,
And all that I wished for
Was to have a small window
The size of my hand
I dreamt
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