“Pandemic Field Notes” for Merrymeeting Fields and Kennebec Estuary Land Trust
by Dawn Potter
Mar, 2021
Pandemic Field Notes
The ticks are waking up, or so I’ve heard.
I should visit them,
but it turns out I’ve forgotten
how to drive to new places.
*
I pore over the map, that mournful record
of time, old riverine choked in a net of asphalt.
Where is my heavenly sign, assuring me
“This is where you are”?
*
In 1791 a man invented a tame vision of the Kennebec
butting into the head of Merrymeeting Bay.
“Navigable for small Vessells,” his drawing promised.
As if: “The wild is no trouble at all.”
*
My terror of travel is not fake.
I say this to make myself feel better because
in 1791 I would not be here. I would still be
in Poland eating cabbage. Oppression be damned.
*
Before maps there were paths.
Before paths there were other paths.
Always, a beast’s feet threading a kill zone.
Still, water wins in the end.
*
For twenty-five years I lived next to a vernal
pool in a forest. Lots of frogs, but the mud stayed put.
So what’s the deal with these thrashing river mouths,
tearing up their beds like myth-monsters?
*
Aha! you crow.
So you did travel!
Yes, but I kicked and screamed
the whole way.
*
Dear armchair traveler, dear
couch potato, what is a voyage?
I lie on my back in the wet dead bracken and stare up
into the leafless maples. Probably a tick is crawling on me.
*
One thing I do know:
paddling a tidal river is hard.
I may never do it again,
unless I get homesick for monsters.
Dawn Potter (she/her) was a 2020 finalist for the National Poetry Series. She directs the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching and is the author of eight books of poetry and prose—most recently, Chestnut Ridge, a verse history of the coal-mining region of western Pennsylvania. Her poems and essays have appeared in the Sewanee Review, the Threepenny Review, the Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Dawn designed and leads the high school writing program at Monson Arts and co-directs the Kauffmann Seminar on Environmental Writing, also for young writers. She lives in Portland, Maine.
Kennebec Estuary Land Trust (kennebecestuary.org) is committed to conserving land and wildlife habitat of the Lower Kennebec and Sheepscot River estuaries. They are a community based membership organization serving the towns of Arrowsic, Bath, Bowdoinham, Dresden, West Bath, Georgetown, Richmond, Westport Island and Woolwich.