Cumberland County Kingdom

From the Kezar Pond to Saco Bay
Old Orchard Beach to Bailey's Island
Cumberland County, Maine a land of tall pines
The land of my youth___
The summer camp on Watchic Pond
Built by my grandfather
An orphan became a frontline surgeon in WWI France
A retreat from the horrors to Maine
With a nurse, my grandmother.
A noble woman from a 9th generation Maine family__

Gorham was their refuge
The two had a family
Three children
One my father
Later they moved to a huge farmhouse
To Westbrook
By the Presumpscot Rier
Near the shadow of the SD Warren papermill__

As a young boy
My best friend Chaney
On Falmouth Foresides
McKinley Road
His house close to mine__
We palyed hockey in my backyard
Fought the bully
Skeeter Kresgee
Lover Kathy Burns

And more__
One day he found a basket of dead puppies
Didnt say where
We walked to the pier
Beneath the bluff
At the end of Mckinley Road
Climbed down the steep stairs
To the fishing dock
We threw the still puppies
Into Portland Harbor br/>They bobbed
The tide took them to sea br/>I thought nothing of it__
In the summer of 1960 br/>Chaney drowned in Sebago Lake
He was only eight.
I have never seen his gravestone___

Four years later
big-breasted girl working at a drugstore counter asked,
"Will you walk me home?"
At 12 a walk was a walk
I stuffed my comic in my jean's back pocket
And drained my glass of vanilla soda
I accompanied the girl along the Presumpscot River br/>Into the woods
Past the paper mill
No houses
No voices
Only the grinding of the wood saws across the river
And the murmur of cars along Main Street__
We stopped in the woods br/>No one in sight br/>I felt so alone
She lifted her dress over her head
Her breasts rose tipped puff pillows___
I fled
Ran fast chased by laughter
Ran to my grandmother's house
Upstairs to a bedroom with sea murals br/>Painted to remind my grandparents br/>Of the French countryside br/>Not the war__
I lay in bed br/>My aunt's bed
Another innocence gone__

In 1975 my grandmother passed away
The camp was sold
The house on Main Street too
Chaney's family had moved north
From Falmouth Foresides
I went south
First with my family
To the South Shore of Boston
Then alone
To New York.
A city of too few pines to soothe old ghosts
Of an exile from Cumberland County
They, Chaney, the girl, my grandmother Edith are with with always__