Mistress Anne Pollard recalls
her late arrival in Boston:
"We ate the wild blueberries
that grow like dark underfur
in the tall grass on the slope of Fort Hill.
The water had the bright taste
of moss and old stone, so sweet
after the brackish mudwells of Salem.
Hermit Blaxton regretted
he'd invited us; he liked
preaching to his bull, and much
preferred marsh grass to people.
Her removed down to the Narragansett,
bewailing his bad judgment:
'They dump their slops in the street.
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
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.
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