A Smokin' Hot Babe, and a Meteor Shower (With Update)

All I could see form where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way
And saw three islands and a bay.

That would be Edna St. Vincent Millay, from Renascence, one of the poems which I, at least, associate with the State of Maine, where Mr. and Mrs. Buce disported themselves last week, lounging about in a regime of compulsory idleness. The picture is not a mountain or a wood, but it is a bay, or at any rate, a sound--Mericoneag Sound, off Bailey Island. And it may be an island—it’s a point off the end of Harpswell Neck, south of Brunswick, but it seems to be connected to the mainland only by one of those bridges that did not exist before the Europeans started to make a nuisance of themselves.

I picked up a good deal of Millay along about 1951, when she would have been my sister Sally’s favorite poet. We both remember our mother warning her that Millay really wasn’t of the first rank. We speculate whether mother was trying to protect her little girl from embarrassment—or to protect herself from embarrassment that her little girl should have such vulgar taste. Either way, I’d say the real point is that Millay certainly is memorable and accessible, and she seems to be a good deal more of a smokin’ hot babe than, say Emily Dickinson; perhaps a thousand times more than, say, Adrienne Rich.

I’ve always associated Millay with Maine. Per Wiki I learn that she was indeed born there, though she doesn’t seem to have spent much time there. Either way, I am happy to associate her with the exhilarating fresh breezy air and the low, rolling (slightly spooky) pine-covered woodlands. And the long mountains, and the islands. And the ocean, did I mention the ocean? Did I mention that it changes color and texture every time you look at it? I don’t suppose I can blame her for the fact that they seem to overcook their fish.

Here’s another bit of Millay that must be about Maine:

I shall go back again to the bleak shore
And build a little shanty on the sand
In such a way that the extremest band
Of brittle seaweed shall escape my door
But by a yard or two; and nevermore
Shall I return to take you by the hand.
I shall be gone to what I understand,
And happier than I ever was before.

The love that stood a moment in your eyes,
The words that lay a moment on your tongue,
Are one with all that in a moment dies,
A little under-said and over-sung.
But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies
Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

Oh, and Persieds. Yes, there were Persieds. We set the alarm for 1 am. I counted seven, all spectacular, but then we got sleepy and went back to bed.

Update: I see somebody just linked here from a Google Search. The search terms were: "hot babe in shower." Sorry to disappoint.