Last of the Maine Haiku
Oh dear, sweetest Maine; blueberry season was too short.
After an all-too brief season I find myself back in New York for a week to recuperate before moving to Montana next week. Yes, with what dismal internet connection I had (hence the lack of regular posts, I have a bit of a back log to catch up on!), I spent applying to farm and farm adjacent jobs to figure out what to do in a Covid-entrenched world (well, I’m really mostly talking about the US. Our collective response has been appallingly embarrassing), and just this past Sunday I was offered a year long position at an organic market farm near Missoula, up in the Bitterroot Valley and I could not be more excited.
Coming up I have some reflections on the plein air sketchbook I kept in Maine (and will continue to fill as I travel and settle again in the West), more Haiku, a longer poem and thoughts on processing trauma, and some other still-somewhat-secret-things (coughpodcastcough).
Until then, a longer than usual installment of haphazard haikus, written on the rocky shores of down east Maine.
Bull trods and picks
through rough bulrush
Katahdin crowned
My rake teases soft
berries, sky blue
velvet from the thicket
Tent-mate golden cricket
four days and still they
leap like a puppy
A glowing pink sunrise
only seen at the
insistence of my bladder
Mosquitos swarm my
shoulders and neck, I am
scared of heights, stop
Plump like a grape bunch
the parasitized caterpillar
is returned to the field grave
Clothes shorn, rock throne
Mask remains for giggles
enveloped in silky water
A shadow, tawny
and striped, leaps through
the trees, ferocious guard
Crawling mantis
clings desperately to my
rake, go home friend
Inch worm creeps along
the skin of my tent,
feet dark in the morning
Cervid arm bone
bleached white and stark
below violet berries
Lichen and moss rock
perched to hear a call
dogs bray and crickets trill
Breath deep and hold
your nose, Sand Beach
sings equal beauty and rot
Briny air across pastures
My hoodie buried
deep in my car, gooseflesh
