Robert M. Chute
excerpt from Bent Harbor:
We came as windblown seeds across
an unknown ocean to land beyond
the margin of our map, not lost
but run away to settle here
where our roots found, and bound
themselves in cracks, in crevices,
in scraps of rocky ground
to hold this embryo town against
tide and storm. We anchored in between
a bony thumb and finger reaching
out for us. We stood on what seemed,
not an oustretched palm, but the
rough knuckled back of raw land
to watch the ship slip down below
the eastern rim. Our cabins stand
facing that bare, gray eastern sea,
but it's the rising sun we seek there.
The forest at our back becomes
our fate. I shade my eyes to stare
seaward: our fishing boat rises
on a swell of sun-flare, falls again.
I see the land's rocky finger
bent to the thumb, beckoning,
not pointing. So Bent Harbor was
what we named this place.
Behind our rude cabins, across
a narrow, stump filled field, we face
the forest, deep beyond all sounding.
There is no ship to sail that dark sea.
We crawl as snails from tree to tree.
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