Maine

It’d be a land of giants
except they sink into the mud.
Or wherever they stand,
the spruce stand taller.
And when they speak,
it’s like their jaws
have been shot up with Valium.
“Muthah, Fathah,
where’s the cah?”
Chowdah, ayuh,
gawmy, crittah…
you get the idear.

Nobody there
has ever lived anywhere else.
“Californier – all that
yoger shit and movie stahs.”
There’s fishing villages
the color of the fish they catch.
And houses stacked on
wave-wracked rocks.
Somewhere in the middle
is Stephen King
and beyond him,
bears and moose.
The sun gets there first
for some reason.
But it don’t stay long.

The only one syllable state –
has to be if you want
to be a Mainah.
I met a woman from there once –
away from the trees
and with the mud off her shoes
and quiet when I held and kissed her
well maybe she wasn’t from Maine
after all.