A few poems Maine Gov. Janet Mills wrote over the years

“For My Granddaughter” (2016)

While in the delivery room,

It is the fist you notice first,

That cling to one another

Clutching their own new skin,

A Department of the Future,”

There are things I have seen I cannot explain –

The way a child cries and laughs

The way autumn always brings

the smell of fries and donuts, musty hay,

the baying of old animals, the carnies and barkers,

the crowd in the grandstand shouting with a single voice,

The way spring brings everything back we’ve

Sheltered all the long dark days—

And the way a dying person sometimes

Our friend Harry had one last good day.

In deep coma, it was the end, they said,

as they pulled the tubes,

and he awoke with a smile.

And when you and I went to say goodbye,

He was having the best party,

Telling such stories with his

Firefighter friends, his wife, his neighbors,

Like red lights in the sky

That twice appeared when I was on

An old road on a dark night.

Like the music we heard at the lake

That came from swift bats, tall trees,

Like the man lost three days in deep woods,

Walked out, following the river

Like the time I found you, love,

Like you, when we came to say goodbye.

You knew us, you saw us, you held us,

And thanked us, every one,

“This Fussy Fatality” (from “Balancing Act: A Book of Poems by Ten Maine Women,” 1975)

This fussy fatality I have found must

belong to some god-like dog-day dreamer

who, falling under the frequency of

the full moon, forgets us,

blinded by forgeries of the past,

his eyes two telescopes of time turned inward.

Pink and scarlet of dusk’s purgatorial

keeps us in-and-out, flame-bent for

purposes priceless and unfathomed.

We return from forms of perfect mind

to under zero, acknowledging the

harboring in undergarments our wares

preserved with secret sacrifice.

Logic makes checker squares on all that’s touched

feigning bravado from every face I see;

yet from the crevice of all eyes

come these spiralling scarlet circles,

“So What” (from Island Journal, 2021)

a little amputation of eagle

Hiding strong wide wings,

wild offspring of Canada,

hymns to an ancient heart,

Something too long absent,

“I have always known you