Frost Heave Poetry
Only in Maine can the bumps and craters of a roadway prompt a new resident to write a tribute to the winter landscape — frost heaves and all.
Beth Terrell
County roads, Cross Point Farm, Edgecomb.
John Carter
Glitterdays
Starting up the slushmobile for another watchful venture
into the nearest town, over the earth’s winter chilly bumps
under the thin skinned asphalt trail,
picking a way through the potholes and pieces
of what is yet left to pulverize the encrusted car,
my attention first wanders, then focuses wide open
on the sheer icy beauty of this land
as I shake, rattle, and roll past the cold, sparsely lived
backwoods roads of rural Northwoods Maine.
The whistling shore winds piling mounds of water
up higher against rocks and more rocks, blaze trail paths
through groves of inland trees with such bullying determination
to reach the next bay under the low midday sun.
Glistening, truly blinding, daylight reflecting frozen waters,
on both land and sea, twinkle & gleam throughout varied landscapes,
enhanced by every infinite fleck of dazzling, sparkling snow sugar
past the glare on a salt and sand etched windshield
scoured to the shimmer of many, many diamonds in a January day.
The winter white world is animated with optical treats of the season,
storing up the windfall of waters held back until sweet spring,
full of promises of the days to come bearing green grass, abundant fruits,
and easier, open window living, of bicycle rides and burying toes in sand.
Until then, the expansive flashbulb vistas hypnotize and capture,
with an ostentatious burst of bling, hard ice and sunlit prisms,
in the frozen crystal day lights and solar flares of Maine.
Beth Terrell lives in Roque Bluffs, near Machias.
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