A Poetry of Place: Newburyport, Massachusetts

A favorite photo of mine that I took while standing on the dock in downtown Newburyport.

⚓ 

I can hear the bells now announcing the hour. Too, the train whistling as it speeds down the tracks here in Fairbanks.

I haven’t fully grieved leaving my home in Newburyport to return to Alaska for a steady, salaried job. My time there was years too short, yet I am aware of all that I have gained in both Nome, which I will write about next, and in my current residence in Fairbanks. 

I worked everyday when I lived in Newburyport. I worked full time as a teacher and part-time as a security guard at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. I rarely painted as I had limited time to do so. During my residence there I wrote and published only one poem, which I end this post with.

I did sketch and those works are framed and hang in my current art studio. Here are two of  my sketches below:

Yet, I made good lasting friends while I lived there and got my first tattoo, followed by six others before I returned to Alaska. A physical diary of my time there that gained three more tattoos when I visited last December. Art on my sleeve in the most literal sense. 

Yes, I still have many emotions to sort through regarding leaving my life there; lending to the brevity of this post. I know much of that has to do with still looking where to permanently drop my anchor. I am still in pursuit.

I hope you hear the bells ringing, that you feel the tickle of the feathers. 

⚓ 

 Bells

Feathers

on my pajama 

sleeves.

Goose-down pillows, 

when squeezed,

release

a few.

Thistle,

iris,

and baby’s breath

stand

in a given

blown glass vase.

Morning light plays

in a flannel field 

of gold flowered

sheets;

my garden bed

made for one,

no longer two.

All around me, 

furnishings 

gathered 

and brought

by loved ones 

not visited 

a year

or more.

I sit 

on my 

bedroom chair

and hear 

church bells

announce 

the hour.

How 

did I 

ever 

tell time 

before?

August spent

out on the tundra,

picking berries

where cotton

grows.

Fall came.

I packed.

The Big Dipper

took its seat

where the sky 

and the sea met.

I traveled

three thousand

six hundred 

and seventy five

miles to turn

a key 

in a 

cardinal

colored-door

on Essex Street.

I left the tundra

for salt marshes;

one wide 

open space

for another.

Now, 

I wake 

to hear

bells 

ring in

the early hours,

and, 

on my sleeves,

feathers.

Susan Slocum Dyer / © SSD

⚓