On one of the myriad bays
along the Maine coast. Keep the holocaust
at bay I said to Dave because
you’ll spend all day gathering
2,000 calories and still be miserable hungry.
An undiminished population of humans is risible.
Black spruce and balsam fir,
you can eat the inner bark
in a starvation emergency.
There’s plenty of Cornus—bunchberry—
each orange pith around the stone
worth maybe a quarter calorie.
Lots of sarsparilla but the fruits
not out yet and to date I have not
savored one. Let’s see—dandelion
of course and huckleberry but
the most important source of sustenance
would be seaweed.
Learn your mushrooms! for the protein.
Accept the situation
come the apocalypse.
I struggle against my insignificance
but it would be better to struggle
against my ignorance.
Less effortlessness, more fishermanliness.
That’s the lesson of this Maine vacation
there’s a lot you can eat when in need—
the hips of roses and the pips of grasses.
And an endless supply of seaweed—
bladderwrack, dulse, kelp and thin green lettuce.
Categories:
dulse, fish, fruit, holocaust, nature,
Form: Free verse
In a field of daisies, bathed in a perfume
of wild roses, clover and ocean brine,
you and me in the early afternoon
drinking Kool Aid, pretending its wine,
and sharing left over crumbs with a few tiny ants,
that scurry across a thread barren cloth
that has spent years in a trunk with a moth,
While we eat a meal fit for a King and Queen-
Periwinkles, Dulse and canned Sardines-
treasures from the Great Atlantic Sea,
while the rolling waves break on the rocks below
in this field where so many daisies grow
He loves me, he loves me not, my daisy flies away,
And only Jimmy and the wind will ever know.
Written: June 9th, 2014
Author's Note.
This was my first picnic with my first love - We were 6 or 7 years old at the time.
Categories:
dulse, boyfriend, childhood,
Form: Sonnet