In verse: Maine places and people

Produced by Maine Poetry Central and Dennis Camire

This week’s poem by Siiri Cressey beautifully personifies and describes a mountain through the seasons.

 

Mount Mollyockett

By Siiri Cressey

 

In summer she’s a young old woman;

her gnarled granite bones wrapped

in shreds of alkaline dirt,

embroidered with wide patches

of hardy green needles.

She humps over, looking for

blackberries on Mount Tom,

Little Molly in tow.

Come winter she hunches,

bending into the wind,

wrapping her cloak of whiteness

close around her

to shield herself from the cold;

her spindly dead-pine fingers

clutching the drifting folds

like grim death.

Her watery arteries thicken and freeze,

slowing her as she shuffles toward spring,

where she dies in a muddy slough

and is born again, triumphant,

in a burst of vibrant green.

 

Dennis Camire can be reached at [email protected]