AN OBSERVATORY REVIEWS PIER PILINGS IN CASCO BAY

The Portland Observatory was built in 1807 to ‘view the bay's horizon to hearken the arrival of ships in order to call workers to the docks to unload supplies and operate fish processing plants’.

Pilings:

Present ARMS.

Oh: I see you have no arms

military or muscular -

excuse my mordant humour: limbs

lost in the tempest of ‘12

or ‘28 or the fire

of ’40?  Perhaps

I overestimate your age.

At EASE:

We’ve both known decay:

I may outlast you

but eventually my feet of stone

will survive no better than

yours of Appalachian lumber.

Mark me: we will all fall

impotent in the final storm.

ENOUGH:

We do not talk much, you and I.

I suppose it’s our preoccupation

with our survival as we age.

But we belong together

in common time and place.

Yes. That we converse

at all is a satisfactory miracle.