Planetary Stories Project

"To Act Globally, Think Locally – Through Stories"

Black Earth Institute

Place: Boothbay Harbor, ME, USA

They will cut the lines of fellow fishermen with one hand
and give a year’s wages to the widows of their brethren
lost at sea with the other, and they are a proud people

who eke out a living from a cold Atlantic Ocean,
which is as cantankerous as their fathers’ fathers,
and mothers’ mothers. They pick mussels off rocks

and pylons at low tide, and grow old - fashioned
roses, tomatoes, rhubarb, and potatoes from ground
more rock than soil, and their delights are skiffs adrift,

sea hawks after puffins, tall tales, trimmed sails
and wind directions, enduring tourists, deep-sea trawlers,
draggers, and divers, for they are a humbled lot

made so by months of ice and snow, wind and hail.
And they dwell on the ocean’s apex and not on the rungs of success,
possessing a wit as dry as a fireside mitt, imbued with sarcasm

and passion, these caring folk who cut fins off sharks, hoist babies
on their knees, shoot shag and seagull for sport, and pray
to Poseidon and Odin, and on Sundays at Our Lady of Peace to Jesus.

And they do not suffer boredom like you and me
because there are traps to mend, bags to bait,
bridles to replace, buoys to paint and hulls to scrape,

and they are a private lot who love to gossip over Moxie and cribbage,
and take great stock in their peninsula which is just about
the right sort of port to raise a family,

and they do not fear for the future or their 401ks,
or they make do and dine on poor beagle and welsh rabbit
when the ocean withholds lobster, cod, and halibut.

Boothbay Harbor
By Annie Finch

When ocean
pulls towards ocean,
leaving seaweed
on the rocks,

it will dry
to curl outward
with the blossom
of the salt.