Produced by Maine Poetry Central and Dennis Camire

This week’s poem, by Bob MacLaughlin, humorously explores how someone “from away” invariably comes to fit in with his Maine neighbors who, like all of us, seem eager to want to find a simple reason to like a newly transplanted “out-a-stata.”

 

Having Bought The Farm

Waldoboro, Maine, 1979

By Bob MacLaughlin

 

The house was fading white

the barn peeling red

the ell that connected them

a little of both.

So, too, the chicken coop

wood shed and privy.

 

I hired a guy

hauled sixty gallons of latex

to the dooryard

mixed a little red

into the white primer

so the top coat

would cover better.

 

My Volkswagen Bus

with California plates

and No Nukes bumper sticker

accented the foreground

as a hundred years of history

turned blush pink.

 

A pall descended,

neighbors no longer waving

as they drove by

until four days later when

a final coat of solid American red

brightened the mood again.

 

 At bean suppers that winter

people would come up and say

“Sure glad you changed your mind.”

 

 Dennis Camire can be reached at [email protected]