loose threads

her shoulders supine in warm grass
the sea salt air and pennyroyal
their perfume mixing like the harbor meeting the ocean
open-mouthed, eager, teeming with want 

While nosing around the internet last week, I read about the Sarah Orne Jewett house in South Berwick, Maine. In addition to photos of her book cover designs (which sparked their own project in my mind), I was reminded that I freaking love Sarah Orne Jewett. I’ve been reading The Country of the Pointed Firs this week, and friends, my soul is drinking it up. The narrator rents an abandoned school house overlooking the town/harbor in coastal Maine for fifty cents a week and spends her days there writing undisturbed. There are pastoral landscapes and so many seafarers and a tragical love story (it seems, I’ve only just got there!)

This excerpt is one of several drafts I’ve started inspired by the book. They’ll probably become one piece in the end but it’s nice to leave April behind and start May still feeling inspired (despite the odds).