I tried really hard to embrace the gray this morning. It looks like we're sandwiched between 5 days of rain. I think I'll go for the blue this week. This is a poem my dear of dears, Pat Hegnauer wrote for me when I took her to one of the most beautiful places I know, mid coast Maine. When we have a few summer rainy days in a row, I tend to yearn for Maine's big clear blue skies. Maine resident Eric Hopkins, painter of countless coastal islands there, captures the color and my heart ache for "Vacationland" This painting is called Three Points and more of his work can be found here.
Blueberry Girl
-Pat Hegnauer
The blueberry girl coos
and ruffles her breast to nest
and hatch remembrance
of Grandmother's geography;
maple mountains, cedar seas,
and spiced stands of balsam.
Standing rocky yards away
from the Pemaquid light
she glows bright at eventide,
casts her memory fore and aft
in shadows of the deep rills
and channeled ocean slabs.
She hunts miles on thin roads
for sea-lavender and scallops,
picks lobster from her smile,
bathes in the chamomile stars
cascading down the wide
black northern nights.
Her family bones are tangled
deep in stoney soil and fierce farms,
hunkered on the salty slopes,
and grassy dells patched in forests
greening to the bouldered bays
where inlets wait for tides and sky.
The blueberry girl coos
and ruffles her breast to nest
and hatch remembrance
of Grandmother's geography;
maple mountains, cedar seas,
and spiced stands of balsam.
Standing rocky yards away
from the Pemaquid light
she glows bright at eventide,
casts her memory fore and aft
in shadows of the deep rills
and channeled ocean slabs.
She hunts miles on thin roads
for sea-lavender and scallops,
picks lobster from her smile,
bathes in the chamomile stars
cascading down the wide
black northern nights.
Her family bones are tangled
deep in stoney soil and fierce farms,
hunkered on the salty slopes,
and grassy dells patched in forests
greening to the bouldered bays
where inlets wait for tides and sky.
