THE CITY IS A SHRUB OF WONDERS

Mistress Anne Pollard recalls

her late arrival in Boston:

"We ate the wild blueberries

that grow like dark underfur

in the tall grass on the slope of Fort Hill.

The water had the bright taste

of moss and old stone, so sweet

after the brackish mudwells of Salem.

Hermit Blaxton regretted

he'd invited us; he liked

preaching to his bull, and much

preferred marsh grass to people.

Her removed down to the Narragansett,

bewailing his bad judgment:

'They dump their slops in the street.

You wouldn't know the place,

all those blank salt-grey houses,

the harbor growing masts like dead spiked ferns.'

Houses and masts came later.

We lived beneath Trimountain

in tents and hide wikiups,

dragging wood from the mainland.

My sister died of scurvy

while the town cove was sealed with pale blue ice.

We doted on small blessings:

no wolves, no rattlesnakes, no

mosquitoes. The spring came late,

after thick rains. Off mudflats

the river wind coiled new weeds,

smelling of salt, and fish, and rosemary."

This poem, written by JOHN HILDEBIDLE, a school teacher in Newton, won first prize in the 1976 Summer School poetry contest.