Seeking

for old New England

in old trials: to each conviction

what percentile

of unapprehended drunks, lustful lookers, sleights-of-finger?

Unless the convicted

were innocent as witches. There is that

about old New England. People

understand each other better than that

usually, though, no matter what they testify

guardedly on the phone: "It's not just

that she's lazy, has round heels and sews

Paris labels in Klein's clothes":

as the bird feigning lameness

draws to itself yet more to the nest the attention it sought to

thwart.

Here is the nest, in this old New England

woodpile: three robin's-egg-blue

robins' eggs: ergo: that lame bird was a big healthy robin

though it dropped dead at your feet. That's

just DDT. The romance

of certain old clothes

may be merely olfactory. Still, there must've been a lot of

watched pots under stovepipe hats

("Seen Walcott's new 'Pilgrim' beaver?")

and a stranger from Spain

found the freedom to kiss

and play kissing games a

little hard to take. Later,

liked it. Real old

New Englanders: viz: Juanita

Walcott y Gomez, "Blue Juanita"

corrupted to Blue Juniata. That was later, and further west

where the wild rice lightly rattled into canoes

and the better people came from the East

humming, By the Rude Bridge

and, Flower from the Caerulian Wall. You can't get far enough

from old New England (humming, The Lowell Factory Girl

Song)

since you can't get any nearer.

This hair bracelet won't tell much

(a late, maybe Hispano-Dutch corruption: somewhere along

the line

the Juanita link pops up

in Gomez Walcott y van Aau)

nor this portrait of old Judge Lindsey Wooley,

"scourge of the Passamaquody",

a collateral of old Juanita's. Say, who are all these bug-big

old New Englanders pursuing and pursued by

red men the height of a red mite? The sun shines white

on clapboards in green Wiscasset

where in a cellar hole

dusky tulips

incline their heads. "Maine isn't old New England!"

Maine is Maine I can hardly remember

when it was still Massachusetts

or the birthplace of Emma Eames (Bath)

or of Maxine Elliot (Rockland)

or Edna St. Vincent Millay on her island (Matinicus)

or Robert Tristram Coffin humming, Forever Is Not Far

(wonder where he fits in the

"Judge and Mrs Wooley v. A. Tristram-Gomez take pleasure"

picture?

You remember, her daughter by hubby no. 1, Lindsey Coffin:

Ginger,

the girl with the labels. She married a bohunk from Scranton,

Mlokosewistch.

(Paeonia Mlokosewistchii!

PORTRY

"Sulphur yellow

large globular

perfect compliment

jade-green of leaves and pink petioles

of unusual distinction" indeed

Mlokosewitch, you live on

let us honor him with bunches of Epilobium anguistifolium

great rose willow herb or common fireweed

in early August

summoning fall

with rosy wands

"Remember to slam the parentheses behind you."

) bang ) bang and ) ) double bang

(to be on the safe side).

Here are seven lucky stones

0000000

found in old New England. And a snail shell @

the common Nash

the stately Reo

dumped in old New England bays

metal reefs

instant housing

for fishy prey of predator fish

"Conservation

is true charity" says the bulletin of Our Lady of the Sea

looking out over wrinkled-rocked Stonington

its doors open

to all the thanksgivers who can't crowd in

for the contract the Crotch Island Quarry got

for the granite to build The Memorial

after a year-long lay-off

old New Englanders (Haskell, Cacciacavallo)

lifting up blocks of granite

eating an island out of the sea

like the wonderful fish and terrible food

at Glad's Lunch