Underground Railroad Marsh - I have heard about this marsh being part of the underground railroad . . .
I have yet to run down written fact about this being part of the underground railroad that was part of a secret route with 'safe houses' that enabled southern black slaves to escape to the northern part of the U.S, and to Canada prior to the Civil War in about the 1850 to 1860 era - but at different times in my life and from different sources I have heard that this was a landing area for slaves secretly crossing the North East River and following the water way farther into and across the woods of the Elk Neck Peninsula and continuing across the Elk River coming out near French Town. I hope to nail this down for sure in some future date.
The Bay - Cold Day
yesterdays photograph across the Chesapeake Bay reminded me of this poem I wrote about 1972 about Back Bay where I lived in Maine
Crows and Snow
The bay is packed in
ice with snow from shore to shore
where the great moon
tide comes in all creaking,
inexorably lifting
that ponderous protesting mass.
Across the white reach
the far shore stretches unbroken and virgin,
not one cabin, one
dwelling, to send its’ light across to me
and the only bird here
in this bitter cold of winter’s wind
Is the crow – flying solitaire
with flapping scrutiny of the intruder.
But now that I have
come often enough to the field and the tide
they have come to fly
in pairs – slow steady beats of their wings
and we accept one
another.
The bay packed with
snow and ice from shore to shore
randomly heaved into giant statuesque
stroboplosions of ice sculpture
as in some slow
motioned dream of crows and snow
by the living tide
venting itself against the unseen living rock
- yet I know the Smelts come soon and the Tom
Cod.
Is it this visibly
frozen cold that is their dream
or is it the spring to
come?
69
the most magical bay
in my first venture into the past of my youth – West Bay, an arm of Gouldsboro
Bay in Maine.
circa 1972
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