Poems from Living Here
A Culture Of Necessity
How eerie time is.
How many footsteps have walked and worked here
hands never idle until now.
There are still lobstermen buying bait in the bait shop
down below,
still fishermen going out to the deep ocean to catch
that baitfish,
mostly herring.
This is still a working harbor.
Most of us these days are not part of a culture of
necessity.
Our hands are not calloused. Our gardens are not our
food source.
Yet I’m drawn to go down to the end of the road;
go to where the weather still has an impact,
where time is still counted in sunrises.
Every year or so I need to stand on our eastern edge
and look out into the vast North Atlantic.
I need to hear the buoy bells in the channels of the
Bay of Fundy.
I need to be comforted by a coastline that is hard
enough to have remained intact since this continent
tore apart from Greenland .
Most of all, I am compelled to be reminded of the
hundreds of footsteps that have walked on these hard
cannery floors,
on dark cold days,
for all the daylight hours and beyond sundown,
with hands chapped and gnarled, packing fish;
working men and women whose children and
grandchildren are still solidly part of this community
struggling to find a way to stay on.
I need to see their faces, hear their voices, and share
in their strength.