The gas is gone again. The only wood is driftwood. And, it won’t dry.
Colors change strangely in Ipswich this year. Green tides turn red.
Once black crows, coated in ash, crack clams with chipped beaks. Once white
seagulls, stained with ship fuel, get their fish while they can. I can’t blame them:
I’m out shooting trees for a little sugar. No permit. Out of season.

Smoke, searching for syrup, licks crimson from this year’s
maple leaves. The trigger on my tapper gets sticky. Puritans
resurrect in cold Calvinist shadows. They still starve
for pumpkins and passenger pigeons. They’re unarmed.
For now. When they point their blunderbusses at me,
I hope they’ll settle for frozen turkey. We get it, now, shot free.

When harpoons rise and fall, they’ll find every leviathan fled. But lanterns
no longer need fat to cast light. They burn on gas instead. Whalers, crab trappers,
and lobstermen enlist in darkness. Piracy has always been a matter of necessity.