Damariscotta

Damariscotta

For Arthur Kleinman

You ask why I turn to landscape, lift
my eyes unto the hills. It’s identical
to the haven you find in work,
bringing the unbearable
under a semblance of control
so that we are returned to ourselves,
in some small way able to comprehend
what’s slipping through our hands,
what will not answer to our will.

And so I wake to water and the rub
of a jetty against rock,
the tide taking it upon its shoulders
for the second time today
to deaden the shock
of a lobster boat butting against the quay.

I know it well, the brine and pine-
soaked air, decaying bladder kelp
at dead low water, this turning to landscape
for what one cannot say,
and then, having taken my medicine
and been reproved, sitting in silence
at a window that will no longer open,
staring at the sea.

Houses settle, It’s a sign of age.
At night I listen for the familiar sounds:
an engine cut or gunned, gulls clamoring,
the lap and drift of water disturbed
across the bay. The arhythmia of our existence
you might say. The paradox
of being tied to the land
though we know we cannot stay.
A strip of sand where once was solid rock.
Gulls scavenging on what we cast away.

Michael Jackson (Harvard Divinity School)