The forest rots where rusted iron binds
A sullen man pulls down his grease-stained cap,
And swears at maps upon his steering lap,
While gears grind hard within his swelling truck,
Where empty cans of cheap malt liquor muck
The floorboards deep with stale and bitter beer,
While beside him sits his wife with frozen sneer.
This line of loggers stripped the valleys bare,
Now spitting curses at the freezing air,
While further down the coast, their kin awake
To harvest what the freezing waters make.
These fishing cousins drink their ale and swear,
With left-wing slogans screamed into the glare,
Who vote for change but keep the ancient spite,
And cast their nets into the blackest night.
No picket fences guard these broken lawns,
Where engine parts rust green through foggy dawns,
Yet down the road, the wealthy cousins dwell
Behind white pickets in a silent hell,
Where clean neat borders hide the family shame,
And manicured lawns play a deadlier game.
Above this rot, the clever leaders peer,
With razor smiles that mask a quiet fear,
As politicians weave their modern laws,
To trap the common man in unseen claws.
Another brother stands in khaki, stern,
A ranger sworn to watch the brushwood burn,
Who guards with crazed and dark, obsessive zeal
The wild green dandelions beneath his heel;
He tracks the poachers through the stagnant bog,
To shield a weed within the freezing fog.
The neighbors curse the state's eternal chill,
As heavy blizzards choke the pine-clad hill,
Yet mock the tourists buying maple sweets
And plastic lobsters on the coastal streets.
They hate the mud, they hate the summer fly,
And curse the grayness of the weeping sky,
Deeming the bitter frost a cruel curse,
Though gentle spring would only bring much worse.
The timber cracks, the coastal waters boil,
As dark, intelligent, and heavy toil
Consumes the lineage of this wooded trap,
Where nature snaps the human like a sap.
The screen doors slam, and bitter venom flies
Beneath the weight of gray and heavy skies.
The husband roars, a fist upon the hood,
And curses years of harvesting the wood,
While she hurls back a sharp and jagged scream,
To shatter every false and pleasant dream.
The combat spills onto the gravel road,
Where years of silent hatred now unload;
Crushed aluminum cans of cheap warm beer
Are flung through fog to strike the asphalt near.
They turn their rage toward the lawn next door,
Where plastic banners signal tribal war,
And spit their insults at the neighbor's sign,
A faded flag of Trump along the line,
Reviling both the symbol and the man,
With every filthy word a drunkard can.
The cold rain falls to wash the gutter clean,
But cannot rinse the dark, domestic spleen.
This jagged coast of three thousand long miles
Is choked with rocky cliffs and barren isles,
Where salt mists rise to rot the ancient wood,
And drown the places where old towns once stood.
The Wabanaki ghosts still haunt the stream,
While modern children break the historic dream,
And old Acadian fiddles weep and groan
To mimic winter winds that scrape the bone.
From cold Aroostook down to Portland's bay,
A heavy shadow eats the light of day;
The historic Rossini Club may sing its song,
But cannot right a heritage gone wrong.
The independent spirit turns to hate,
Within the borders of this frozen state,
Where isolation breeds a brilliant spite,
And holds the people in a permanent night.
The pine trees groan, the ocean eats the shore,
A dark land waits for what has gone before.
