Cape Ann and Beyond the Cut Bridge
Culling and Cart-wheeling
Sharon R. Chace
Cape Ann and Beyond the Cut Bridge
Culling and Cart-wheeling
Copyright © 2015 Sharon R. Chace. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-61097-878-1
EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-917-4
Manufactured in the U.S.A. 01/13/2015
Dedicated to the Meriden Poetry Society of Connecticut
and The Rockport Poetry Readers of Cape Ann
Acknowledgments
My thanks to the editors of the following publications, in which previous versions of some of the poems in this book were published.
The Littleton Courier: “A Ghazal Celebrating Elder Men”
Gloucester Daily Times: “Cycle Sonnet and P.S.,” “Feeding,” “Haiku of Onshore Wind,” “Dead Whale,” “Etheree of Tides,” “History Lesson,” “Library Triolet,” “Magnification,” “Masked Desire,” “Nor’easter,” “New Englander I Am,” “Petite Ode to Pigeon Cove,” “Rockport Triolet,” “Sky Queens,” “Summer,” “Town Meeting,” and “Winter 2008.”
Record Journal: “A Pet’s Passing,” “Art Class Sonnet,” “Cloudy Beach Day,” “Deed to the Future,” “Greetings,” “Hometown Run,” “Haiku Trilogy,” “Kitty,” “Onward and Upward,” “Page Turner,” “Plant Life,” and “Situated.”
High Tide (2007), a publication of the Milford, Connecticut, Arts Council: “A Cat and a Jesuit.”
Images of Light: Ascent to Trust in Triumph (Resource Publications, 2013): “Radiance.”
On Wings of Verse.75th Anniversary Edition, Meriden Poetry Society 2009: “Hometown Run,” and “Sonnet for Sailors.”
Portfolio of Painterly Poems: A Pilgrim’s Path to God (Resource Publications, 2006): “Art Class Sonnet” and “Cloudy Beach Day.”
The illustration for “Feeding” was done by Frances McGrath, my friend since childhood, who understands the importance of birds and wildflowers on Cape Ann, in Texas, England, and lands unseen. Thank you, Franny.
Thank you Patricia T. Anders and Karen Barr Grossman for suggestions and assistance with the preparation of this manuscript.
Introduction
This book is about Cape Ann, Massachusetts, and places in the wider world that have entered my heart. Sometimes place is in my inner world as in the poem “Punctuation,” in which pause to rest invites sightings of beauty. “Infusion” is about personal interiors.
The context of the poems is beauty as revelation to poets and others. Revelation or disclosure of meanings that are expressed in poems or other forms of art can be subdivided into celebration, protest or lament, and mystical moments. That which is revealed may be the importance of the ordinary, the spiritual in the profane, a sense of place, humanity run amok, or conversely a glimpse of humanity on tiptoe, or even God in whom we “live and move and have our being.” Beauty is found on Cape Ann and in the world beyond our island. Beauty can be friendly and a cause for mystical celebrations, as in pastoral poems about nature. Beauty may also be found in incongruous expressions of pain and lament when suffering touches hearts and flows into words or painterly images. “Plant Life” deals with sin and suffering. There is a hint of prophetic protest in “Winged Warrior” and in “Etheree of Tides.”
Readers who have not visited Cape Ann may want to know more about it, especially Rockport, which is my hometown. Situated on the northern point of the cape, Rockport is a small town of less than seven thousand people. We have a board of selectmen and various committees. Please note that the title of “selectmen” is a job description, not a gender designation. Depending upon when you read this book, either most or all of our selectmen will be women! Volunteer fire and ambulance services serve us well. My sister of heart and hearth, Rosemary Lesch, is one of our harbormasters, along with Scott Story. Rosemary’s mother, the late Eleanor C. Parsons, brought me up from the age of four along with Rosemary after my first mother, Katharine Rogers Parsons, died. Eleanor was the author of books about Rockport; Katharine was a librarian and artist who worked in oils. Eleanor “Ellie” gave me a love for words; my mother gave me the joy of colors.
Rockport is a popular tourist destination, and the season officially opens with the celebration of “Motif No.1 Day.” “Motif No. 1” is an iconic red fish shack, given this name due to its popularity as a subject for artists and photographers over the years.
It took a while, however, for Rockport’s famous fish shack to be recognized. In 1932, two Rockporters, Dr. Earl Green and Mr. A. Carl Butman, a businessman, watched the American Legion Convention’s parade in Detroit. Inspiration struck and a plan emerged with the goal of promoting Rockport. They decided that a float with a replica of Motif No. 1 should be in the next year’s parade in Chicago.
After enlisting talented townspeople from Rockport to build the amazingly realistic float, they entered their “Motif No. 1” into the parade in Chicago a thousand miles away. On their way home right afterwards, bound over roads that must have been as bumpy as the choppy ocean that fisherman navigated, they learned en route that they had won first prize! Reception committees formed back in Rockport to honor the crew and celebrate the victory.
Unfortunately, the blizzard of 1978 destroyed the original shack. But since the director of public works, “Salty” Owens, had the foresight to draw up plans, the building could be rebuilt in its original form after the devastating storm.1 It is this special fish shack that makes its way into my poems, “Art Class Sonnet” and “Variation on Motif #1.”
The three main sections of Rockport are downtown, the south end, and Pigeon Cove, which is also known as the North Village. “Petite Ode to Pigeon Cove” expresses the essence of my days in Pigeon Cove between third and seventh grade. As the tide comes into the natural rock pool at the edge of the ocean, the pool like a bathtub fills up with water. At age eight sitting in the pool soaking in the beauty, I had no idea that in sixty years I would write my favorite Cape Ann poem about it! Readers who find affinity with this poem will enjoy Betty Kielinen Erkkila’s book, My Little Chickadee: Coming of Age in the 1940s & 1950s Rockport, Massachusetts. Her description of Pigeon Cove lovingly captures a time past.
Like Rockport mothers before me, I took daughter Amy to Front Beach for swimming lessons (the other downtown beach is aptly named “Back Beach”). She provided inspiration for “Cloudy Beach Day” because she told me how much she liked the cloudy days of sweatshirts and more intense salt air. But the love of sweatshirts is not for girls only. In her meditation “The Preciousness of Now!” in Out of the Fog: Meditations for Believers and Skeptics, Sarah Clark describes a rainy Rockport day when her son Aram and cousins trekked down Bearskin Neck to buy sweatshirts.
Highlights of downtown are the Shalin Liu Performance Center, the Art Association, the Rockport Public Library, and the First Congregational Church that hosts the Old Sloop Coffee House. The church is nicknamed the “Old Sloop” because, like a large ship it is visible from offshore, its steeple guides sailors to the safety of home port.
Crossing over the Annisquam River to the mainland is symbolic of the