Green Rock, Winthrop Bay

No lame excuses can gloss over

Barge-tar clotted at the tide-line, the wrecked pier.

I should have known better.

Fifteen years between me and the bay

Profited memory, but did away with the old scenery

And patched this shoddy

Makeshift of a view to quit

My promise of an idyll. The blue's worn out:

It's a niggard estate,

Inimical now. The great green rock

We gave good use as ship and house is black

With tarry muck

And periwinkles, shrunk to common

Size. The cries of scavenging gulls sound thin

In the traffic of planes

From Logan Airport opposite.

Gulls circle gray under shadow of a steelier flight.

Loss cancels profit.

Unless you do this tawdry harbor

A service and ignore it, I go a liar

Gilding what's eyesore,

Or must take loophole and blame time

For the rock's dwarfed lump, for the drabbled scum,

For a churlish welcome.