Sun-bitten roads, squinted 
eyes between lapses of 
thought— the Free Masons 
meet each Monday at 
3 PM before the moon swings
shimmering, a loping cat’s eye with
quick battering feet. The 
jesters, the teachers, the scientists, the 
froggy teenagers with gap-toothed canyoned
grins— each plucked merciless-like by this 
mystic message of a road sign. All in 
love with a shovel to dig through dirt 
back to themselves— dazzling 
heaps of compost worms and
hair and leathery lobster shells. Endless cycle, 
endless Mainers like Prometheuses. In Maine— 
every man a Free Mason maniac with his pyramidal home 
of stitched brick and broken words and 
a mess of corpse-full 
tunnels below to spare. 
They’re thick as thieves, those ones. They 
huddle together, chapped lips and sun-hued 
teeth finding meanings of sorrow and 
need with communal idioms. Words ring out. 
Dirigo, dirigo, dirigo.
All three translations in tandem. 
Oh, heavenly God, take us in. 
The day huddles around them too, a 
dry sea finding place with them on Monday 
at 3 PM. On the dot. 
The whole town’s there: fickle
fire-haired Sally and 
Mother and Father and 
my fifth-grade teacher with the mountainous head and
the mailman and overalled Jonathan and 
the doctor and 
my son like a flood of myself. 
Each crescent of my being kneels at the altar. 
They worry words through God’s mouthpiece. 
They wonder if they got it right. 
They wonder if they still believe. 

A couple nights ago, I 
found a flesh-colored blob with 
eyes and hair in the mirror, felt 
fingers over shiny golden 
skin, puckered pinks of acne 
faded, oiled lotioned sandpaper and 
paper-crispy neck like a rebuke
for existing. 

The days run me 
past, leaving me a beached
whale squelching through 
moth-rotten planks and 
croaked “hi”s that, in another 
life, I could billow from my 
lungs like laundry, clean and 
fresh and green— healthy plants 
of words, not rusted gutters. Thoughts 
strung on a loop, rounding out my 
skull like maple syrup greasing
my thighs, 
my fingers. I 
slurp up sweet delicious flat chewy pancakes, 
each a love-letter, 
packed to the crease with wild 
Maine blueberries. Small crinkly things 
like beady black eyes in all 
the books. I remember the signs, the 
silly drawings, those wet 
foreshadowings on the 
wayward drive east
and up. 
Red-hot terror on the 
brain because this conversation’s 
gonna fizzle out like any 
other, so I’m wracking my 
brain, kicking up 
connections like 
red threads.

It’s all in 
the slicing, dicing,
day-dozing headaches
away, dreaming up curled 
up in the snow, snow-gear 
hitched to our shoulders 
down to our rubber boots, curled 
in a singular comma. Breath 
puffs out in cool arching 
waves like a dream. I 
settle around her, white 
gentling down the 
airwaves to our lips and 
our eyelashes. 
We’re all pink and blue. I 
blink, 
and I’m 
in the white stapled propped up wooden tent battling 
the water like a witch, and 
it’s sadness. 
I’m hitching my 
watered-down desires to 
a wagon, wearing my hat all 
jaunty like that in the sun like a spit. I’m 
wide-eyed, enclosed from the 
blue yellow rain, thinking the time away. It’s 
3 PM on a Monday 
like it’s a date and I’m 
the gilded bride of old. Find me 
in the field like a dog-eared teenager 
with a flicker of red-gold hair by 
my side. Remember— 
before the full moon. Remember— 
in Maine like it’s the last place you’ll ever be.