Plaques You Won’t Find on the Shore of the Penobscot River in Bucksport

By Rick Doyle

Here the sagging shag–lined wharf
got dismantled after the war
by square dancers planning to erect
a clubhouse on Verona Island.

This is where one winter day a deer}
pursued by a ragged pack of dogs
was forced to flee across the river
on the tide–lifted havoc of its broken ice.

Here grew the crooked cherry tree
from which once upon a time
after the loss of a phoebe’s favor
a river pilot’s stiff pea coat was hung.

Here lay sturgeon dreaming long
salt snowfalls of slow metallic silt,
gulls and seals and rossed spruce torsos
gone swimming seaward overhead.

Listen. Above the basso profundo
of the sulfurous pulp and paper mill
ferrymen sing, as they pole,
the most popular arias of their day.