Marconi Beach July 19, 2019

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the history of a place

Cranberry bogs and kettle ponds

Tidal flats and beach escarpment cliffs

Sandbar spits and drifted dunes

Placing us in a terminal moraine landscape.

The people living here since the end of the last ice age

Evicted from their land by the English invaders

Killed off by foreign infections and aggressor wars

Remain like ghosts with their place names as reminders.

Those were my ancestors who were the perpetrators

Something no one much talked about growing up

While going to Natick to swim in Lake Cochituate

No one knew what those native words meant.

There was a time when salt works were built here

And the houses mostly followed the salt box design

A time when the railroad transported shellfish

And the transatlantic cable station buzzed Morse code.

Now we ride our bikes on the former rail line

Visiting this place that holds a lifetime of memories

So many summers past layered with the present

Mingle with the history in the ground found here.

So relaxed and comfortable at ease in this place

I could be happy just spending my days here

Wading the shallows and walking the beach

Watching the shorebirds getting on with their lives.

Chatham Monomoy NWR July 17, 2019

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