Produced by Dennis Camire
This week’s poem is by Mike Bove, who teaches at Southern Maine Community College.
Great Aunt June Saves the World
By Mike Bove
On the banks of the Androscoggin they lived
in a shack. Frost between wood slats, a paltry
wall between winter and themselves: children
with absent parents, still in short pants in January.
No money for wool, they watched men set traps
on the ice and at sundown, curled by the stove.
She wiped her brother’s tears and took his hand.
This is how we do it, she thought, and brought him
onto the river with screwdrivers to spring the furry
captives, their eyes glinting thanks in twilight.
Great Aunt June saved the world one beaver at a time.
This she celebrates with family and breadsticks
eighty-five years later in the Olive Garden after
her brother’s funeral, a eulogy she couldn’t hear,
as she remembered his tears and saw a Chickadee
dip like river water from one spruce to another.
Dennis Camire can be reached at dcamire@cmcc.edu
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