Anthony Majahad is a member of the Massachusetts State Poetry Society and good friend to all poets. He is also very patient, since he gave me this for the blog a few weeks ago. I do get distracted.

In any case, he happened to be driving by a place familiar to those of us who live on the North Shore and took a photo, which he admits to manipulating in photo shop.  Here it is, and his poem.

(Again, please remember that for some reason I can’t get this program to allow stanza breaks, so I distinguish with three dots on a separating line.)

Drive-by―Rumney Marsh

By Anthony M. Majahad

Just before the long steep hill on United States Route 1,

the same US Rt 1 that runs from northern Maine

south to the Florida Keys, where salt marshes

nudged-up against the Revere-Saugus town lines:

…

Glimpse quickly, as you speed by at 55 mph,

and act like a human camera with snapping

shutter, automatic film advance, flash recharge…

…

If you can do this, you might see

an almost Impressionistic landscape

of the once untouched, unadulterated marshlands,

the urban incinerator Photshopped-out of the skyline.