You wouldn't know the place,
all those blank salt-grey houses,
the harbor growing masts like dead spiked ferns.'
Houses and masts came later.
We lived beneath Trimountain
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in tents and hide wikiups,
dragging wood from the mainland.
My sister died of scurvy
while the town cove was sealed with pale blue ice.
We doted on small blessings:
no wolves, no rattlesnakes, no
mosquitoes. The spring came late,
after thick rains. Off mudflats
the river wind coiled new weeds,
smelling of salt, and fish, and rosemary."
This poem, written by JOHN HILDEBIDLE, a school teacher in Newton, won first prize in the 1976 Summer School poetry contest.