December 9: Snowstorm

Shadow government.

Three crows flying

in a city snowstorm.

December 19: Social media

From a Portland bar

a friend shares with me

the holiday cocktail list.

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November 26: I-295 North

holiday shopping--

twinkling red lights

finding beauty in traffic

 

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June 27: Mercy

Heading into Portland

for some sushi.

Sign points the way to Mercy.

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April 5: National Poetry Month

The Time & Temperature Building in Portland flashes the time, temperature, and then two sets of 4 letters each that vary from day to day. Currently it's flashing POEM and MNTH for National Poetry Month.

above the city
POEM flashing in bright lights
labels the scene

March 2: Civilization

coffee and pastry

in a cafe near our hotel

cobblestone streets

 

No cobblestones here, obviously, but this part of Portland has nice-looking brick sidewalks

 

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March 1: After the concert

Long walk back to the hotel

holding hands

the city lit like Christmas

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January 31: Cocktail

Behind the bar

bourbon bottles' amber glow,

soft music of ice cubes.

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November 1: Birding in Portland

A stretch of woods below Portland's Western Prom used to shelter a significant number of homeless people. When we birded in that area, we would come across makeshift shelters, piles of clothes, and other heart-breaking signs that people were living there. Now many of the trees have been cut down, opening up the woods: it's no longer good bird habitat, but more importantly, it's no longer good shelter for those humans who needed it. It's not like those who stayed there vanished into thin air when the woods were cleared. As the calendar turns to chilly November, where have they found shelter?

city trees cut down--
sadder to think the homeless
have lost even this

February 20: Birthday

The Chinese Year of the Sheep began yesterday, and today I begin a new turn around the sun. The way a new year begins always feels auspicious. I have a good feeling about this one. We celebrated Chinese New Year with tea and dumplings in a sunny Portland cafe yesterday, and again last night with more dumplings (and cocktails) with good friends at Empire. This morning began with breakfast on the go from Standard Baking Co., which I ate while tromping around the frigid Portland waterfront looking for white-winged gulls with a birder friend--an outing puncuated by calls from my mother and sister singing "Happy Birthday." The white wings of Iceland Gulls shone in the sun, seals surfaced nearby, crows chased a Red-tailed Hawk overhead, a Peregrine stood sentinel on the Casco Bay Bridge, and all is right in my world.

A new year starts well:

coffee and croissant,

gulls along the snowy pier.

Update: And my birthday closed with a brilliant conjunction of the young Moon, Venus, and Mars in the southwest sky... All signs point to yes.

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December 7: Christmas lights

In Portland this afternoon to see the Nutcracker and enjoy some dumplings at Empire. The Christmas tree in Monument Square is lit; the sign on the Time & Temperature building is flashing: 20 (degrees) / BUY / LOCL; holiday lights festoon Congress St. A season of lights in the darkness.

 

Street lights, Christmas lights...

Moon rising over the bay

makes us say, "Oh! Look!"

 

 

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November 9: Birding Portland

Today was the 11th annual Rarity Roundup in southern Maine, coordinated by my friend Derek Lovitch of Freeport Wild Bird Supply. Groups of birders bird a particular territory on the coast between Portland and York, particularly looking for uncommon or out-of-season birds. Derek, his friend Evan and I birded Portland, from the Eastern Prom at sunrise to the West End to Back Bay at sunset. Highlights included a flock of crossbills, a pair of shovelers (ducks) in Deering Oaks Park's pond, Black-crowned Night-herons in the pond at Mercy Hospital, and a Red-eyed Vireo in a West End neighborhood. The bird of the day was the Hermit Thrush, which we found in every little pocket park of downtown Portland, on lawns, in backyards, and in patches of woods, over thirty in all.

 

Spirit of the woods--

bright-eyed thrush watching

in every tree-green corner.

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July 15: Night gulls in Portland

After the rainstorm

pale forms of gulls flit

above Longfellow Square.

 

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March 2: Portland, from the fish piers

You don't notice

the cold so much

with that many gulls to watch.

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April 6: Out on the town

Walking through the bustling streets of Portland in the late afternoon, gulls wheeling overhead in full, spring sunlight, my arms around two dear friends, happy from the day's adventures, the night's adventures still ahead of us...

Buzz of beer and sidewalk bustle--
this day's last light shines
just for us.

January 19: The Men's Room

My husband is getting his hair cut at a place in Portland especially for men. Frankly, this place is a lot more fun than where I get my hair cut. Free beer, pool table, leather couch with widescreen TV playing sports, good alt rock on the sound system, a cute wandering dog, hot 30-something guys with facial hair coming and going... A thin woman all in black with long blonde hair is cutting my husband's hair, making him laugh. And you can buy a cigar on your way out.

 

Fashion mags tell me short hair is coming back for women.

 

Comforts of the hair salon.

Some days I want

to cut it all off.

 

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November 4: Urban birding

Joined two friends for a day of birding in Portland. They know the area well and were familiar with all the pockets of vacant lots, community gardens, and patches of woods along city trails like the Eastern Promenade. Also, Portland being on a peninsula meant we had opportunities for scanning the water. It was a different kind of birding than I usually do, particularly one stretch along West Commercial St., a wasteland which, in warmer weather, is clearly a refuge for many homeless people. Piles of clothing, tarps, and, more heartbreakingly, toys lay scattered in various clearings below a bluff on which sit several large, well-kept houses. It was a surreal experience to witness this evidence of social drama while walking the trails in search of birds, and I found it somewhat challenging at times to focus on birds.

We did come across some interesting birds in this area, including a flock of Hermit Thrushes lingering later into the season than expected. The highlight, however, was a Barred Owl that flew through the woods to land right in front of us. It perched there as we watched it, occasionally giving us a glance, but otherwise, we might not even have been there.

Sodden toys and clothing
scattered in the woods
under owl's dark eyes.

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September 1: Night out in Portland

My husband and I came down to Portland today to walk around the Old Port and have dinner at Petite Jacqueline, a bistro on Longfellow Square to which we'd been given a gift certificate. As we walked to the restaurant this evening past a gas station, a 7-11 with sketchy characters smoking outside, a Rite Aid drugstore outside of which a man was yelling things to passers-by, etc., we could see the moon rising, hovering over the dirty street and the lights of cars and restaurants and traffic signals, distant but somehow outshining them all.

Full moon shines
just as brightly
over the 7-11.

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January 28: Gulls and bagpipes

Walking the sidewalks of Portland waiting for my husband to finish up with an appointment, I could swear I heard the sound of live bagpipes playing "Scotland the Brave." Sure enough, as I got closer to the little park near Middle and Exchange Streets, the sound grew louder, until I could see a young man, standing behind a bench with a jar in front of him, playing the pipes. The music swelled and resonated in the space between the city buildings--bagpipes are not quiet instruments--yet people just walked on by, hardly giving him a second glance. Maybe he plays out there every day. I'm one-quarter Scottish via my paternal grandmother, so hearing this traditional Scottish tune always stirs my genes. I listened from about a block away, enjoying this unusual and not unpleasant din on the Portland streets. As he finished up, a flock of gulls flew overhead, giving voice as gulls do. As the last wailing notes of the pipes faded away in the chilly, late afternoon air, the gulls' cries seemed to prolong them in strange accompaniment.

He began another song, but I had to go meet my husband. I came back later when I had some cash on me, hoping to leave some money in his jar, but he was gone. Perhaps the bagpipes are too much even for the shoppers and street denizens of the Old Port. Or perhaps he'd played his repertoire. We were hit up for money three times as we walked around for an hour or so, but the piper was the only one I would have paid.

One wailing bagpipe
and a flock of crying gulls--
music amid noise.

October 9: Portland

My husband and I are spending the night in Portland in anticipation of having to be in Kennebunkport tomorrow for him to do a reading at the library there. So we're enjoying some time in Maine's biggest city, remembering what it was like to be young and living in places a little more cosmopolitan than Camden, Maine... Not that we don't love my hometown!

While Paul got a haircut at his favorite hair salon in the state, The Men's Room, I scored three awesome cashmere sweaters at Material Objects, my favorite consignment shop in the state. We had chai at Arabica and read the Portland Phoenix, learning about all the groovy events taking place around here that we were going to miss--Indigo Girls at Merrill Auditorium!--and joined the diverse crowds milling around the cobble streets and funky old brick buildings in the Old Port on a sunny Saturday on a holiday weekend. While I don't want to live here, sometimes I just need the social and cultural refreshment of visiting this small urban pocket in our largely rural state. The people-watching alone is a revelation, better than reading a fashion magazine.

For dinner we tried a fairly new Thai place near Longfellow Square called Boda: rich, Thai-style iced tea, crispy squid, skewers of figs wrapped in bacon, beef panaeng (beef with a curry and coconut milk sauce and jasmine rice), pork stuffed jalapenos, and crab fried rice.
Now we're in our room lying on the bed like beached whales, listening to traffic, sirens, and the occasional jet overhead, sated and happy from our few hours on the streets of the Port City.

City: traffic, noise,
food, coffee shops, buses, gulls,
ships, sirens, people.