Coppertoned grown-ups.
Thin-suited kids.
Background shrieks.
The surf-pounded edge
edged by granite
seawalls and steel railings
peopled with little gymnasts
and skinny Phil’s smoke rings
and that boy Timmy who lands on his feet
in the sand after flying.
Nothing more then
than the din of recurrence.
Sure there are times the pattern snags.
In ’78 snowbanks towered, ocean crashed
for days as if the tide never went out.
No school for two weeks. We
scavenged through that gift
and shattering thrill.
That storm of the century took
anything but stone. Roy Moore’s truck,
half the rooms at Captain’s Bounty,
shops at Bearskin Neck.
Lobster pounds, lovers’ lanes. Even
the straight lines of Front Beach railing.
But blizzards fade to legend.
Focus turns to business.
Spring turns up as ours again
and church bells parse out hours.
Hundred-year storms
add up. Why count?
The red buoyed shack poses again
for plein air painters.
Again the snap of hot dog
skin between your teeth.
And loose shrieks dangle
from a new railing.
—
Jeanne L. Bamforth has had poems published in Balancing Act 2, an Anthology of Poems by Maine Women (Littoral Books), Northern New England Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly, and accepted by Willows Wept Review and the Philly Poetry Chapbook Review. She lives and writes on Merrymeeting Bay, an inland confluence of six rivers near the coast of Maine.
