New England’s Sand-bound Coast
Never mind Felicia Dorothea Hemans and Governor DeSantis
In Maine the tides of histories are shown
In waves and sand, yet strangely upside down.
The past is in the foreground, sand waves sewn
Along the coast, a grayness almost brown
But grayness mostly in their textures. Smooth
Is hard to come by in the framing of
The dried up past. Historians would soothe
Us if they could, but facts are far above
Control. The waves of present thinking foam
Against such tidiness that minds might want
To find. The facts don’t feel at home
When hatreds turn designs to darkish gaunt.
The wavelets near the shore attempt find
Some sense but past and now are made to grind.
~ Phillip Whidden
THINK KING CANUTE.