Lineage

Father’s fathers

oared the dorys

into the eastern ocean.

Bobbing through breakers

tossing nets till dusk,

trawling the shoals. 

The bearded breakers 

cut sleeting winds off their anchorage.

This was their burden each morn,

out with the tide, in with the surge.

Cautious of Njord’s mood and

the horizons hue, they compassed

their drift;

then, the swells arose,

shifting their position, as not

to be guttered in the trough,

they leaned against the wind,

these fishermen of Maine with slickened bibs

of Deer Isle and Port Clyde.

– Burt Baldwin, Bayfield