Days of the Gristmill

"Then he withdrew, in poverty and pain,
To this small farm, the last of his domain,
His only comfort and his only care
To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear..."
    –Longfellow, from Tales of A Wayside Inn







4.

We far too often speak of settlers
who had trained choice lots at Sudbury,
the Howes along with the Rutter,
the Bent, the Noyes, came to the coast
in search of a thinking solace
and purpose to tame the chestnut,
the pine and oak to a timber village,
"water resources were available,
wild game and fish plentiful."
But of the Musketaquid Indian,
who wandered the hard foothills
of Mount Nobscot from the time
of continental ancients up through
their tangled decline of the 1630's,
we also must today try to speak,
for we only know the footpaths
that would become Old Post Road.
A single tribe I can only document.
One that started from a strange
journey that covered the Great Lake
of the Huron a meditative water.
We imagine not merely the chief,
all too much has been said of these,
but we will think of a lost daughter,
her name, as far as we can tell,
Shonahzhee, word for wisdom
in a culture bound by known earth.
They say she had been born alone,
along the traces of a village fire,
the mother lended by a local bear,
the father descended from the stars
and both they made a fierce light,
that held their tribe along what
they called the Matacomet range.