through the gate

Old man’s beard and spruce forest at The Neck — Gotts Island — photo by author

When I was kid
barefoot on the old Town Road,
by then, just two ruts crossed by the trees’ tough veins,
a lone gate post still stood at narrowest point of the Neck
lichen crusted, wrought iron hinges hanging and rusted.
Through the spruce, the sea in peeks,
sunshine blue and bright to the north,
on the seaward side, fog
darkened branch and trunk,
and jeweled the grey-green of the old man’s beard.

One post to mark the line
between woodlot and pasture long gone to bramble,
only a lone few of the old growth left in the woodlot,
somber sentinels, thick trunked and brooding,
about them, the unthinned tangle of their offspring.

The old houses on the hill, the sentinel trees
the spill of clam shells and stone tools from the midden mound
ghosts standing watch
while the currents of tide and wind and season darkened the bay.

The gate marked granite headland from forest,
a line determined when The Head was a rock in the glacial outflow
a ridge of gravel and sediment…