Kendall Merriam
South End Poet
Kendall Merriam was
born and raised in Rockland, Maine. He has a history degree from Gordon College
in Wenham, MA and graduate studies in military and maritime history at the
University of Maine at Orono and Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn. He also
received grants to study historical research at Colonial Williamsburg and the
National Archives in Washington, D.C. Merriam has been widely published,
including in Katyn W Literaturze(Katyn
in Literature), a Polish anthology of literary works about the WWII Katyn
Forest Massacre by 120 international authors, including Czeslaw Milosz. Merriam
has written more than twenty books and plays. Most of Merriam’s work has a
definite muse – family, friends, and strangers – with
life’s larger themes of work, love, loss and death. On April 29, 2010, Merriam
was appointed Rockland, Maine’s Inaugural Poet Laureate, an honor from his
hometown Merriam cherishes.
(Kendall’s
second poem this month is actually by his wife, Phyllis. As Kendall says, “The House of Forty Doors must be one of the best written about the
South End, including all of mine. I must say I have to agree with him. It was
written as a present to him on his 71st birthday.)
OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE
POETRY DISORDER
For all poets, everywhere
Can you refrain from
putting pen to paper, typewriter, computer
No matter where you are
If you don’t have paper in
a Chinese restaurant
Do you write poems on the
back of placemats
In a sort of Chinese
Even though you only have
a slightest knowledge of Li Bai or Du Fu
Can you hold yourself from
writing when seeing a beautiful woman or handsome man
Do you aspire to become
the poet laureate
Of your town, city, county,
state, nation, world, the Universe
Do you send out poems to
every magazine that has ever published a poem
Have you considered
changing your name to W. S. Merwin
So you can finally make it
to the New Yorker
Do you pay fees to books
and contests to try to get recognized
Do you travel to obscure
countries to read and get translated
Into a little known
language
Do you take your poetry to
every session with your therapist
When no one is buying your
books do you give them away
To complete strangers
Do you claim to have
started writing poetry at age eight
When your family knows you
couldn’t read until you were fifteen
Do you insist that your
partner read your latest work
Immediately upon
completion
Do you sulk when you are
not invited to poetry conferences
Even though it would be a
100 mile trip and you would not be paid
And the food is inadequate
If you are suffering from
all or even some of these symptoms
You definitely are
suffering with obsessive compulsive poetry disorder (OCPD)
For which there is no
known cure.
Kendall Merriam, Home,
3/20/13 6:23 PM Listening to the
furnace.
THE HOUSE OF FORTY DOORS
An Interior landscape
For Kendall on his 71st birthday 1-24-2013
I live in my house as I live in my skin:
I know more beautiful, more ample,
more sturdy and more picturesque skins:
but it would seem to me unnatural
to exchange them for mine.
-Primo Levi
Early January morning light
illumes the white cellar door
gateway to rubble foundation
that shifts in winter’s freeze
and April’s melt
drawing light lines in the plaster
walls of this 19th Century house
like spider’s webs that expand
in the warmth and light
like the family that expands
with the love
from many generations
now come home again to
dwell, dream in your childhood home
1.The Kitchen: Processing
Afternoon light travels, pauses
over the copper-topped table
original design and built by your father
where once mid-century blue linoleum
blessed meals for nine souls gathered
fournow gone from this house and this life
Four doorways mark the kitchen’s boundaries
five layers of wallpaper - the last one - Chinese junks
with battened sails on tissue paper too fragile to save
the big porcelain sink resettled into new countertops
raised to offer tall cooks a view of The Bay
Three tall twelve-paned windows replaced fifty years ago
for single-paned squares leaking air to frost
new and revealed bead board unify more than a century
of southern yellow pine hidden beneath faded linoleum
lead to the kitchen’s two side doors, outdoors
to the ghost of the side porch and two-story white barn
now
reconfigured into an out building with one door
A laundry room behind the fourth door
once a small bathroom with claw foot tub
labored by two strong men up the front circular stairs
to a new home on the second floor
joined by old porcelain sinks paired to
the Boston monogrammed
toilet
now spares inhabitants in winter’s grip
long nocturnal trips downstairs
2. The Study: Methods of Communication
Off the kitchen with five doors and two doorways is a
much
used room for Wi-Fi, writing, dreaming, e-mailing, bill
paying,
TV watching, telephoning, recovering from surgeries,
practicing with canes
It embraces an alcove with built-in bookcases holding favorites
and the old square post office clock rescued from 1960’s
urban renewal
a room where your father always fell asleep over 11 PM
news
where he spent his last days before the nursing home
wandering the house, calling out for his dead wife,
learning again and
again the grief of her going
3. The Eastside Doorway: Over Exposed
An entryway with an inner and two outer doors greets
all who enter or leave from or to the white-bannistered
porch
photographers and videographers prefer the
two arched windows – one etched, one plain
have greeted a thousand souls since 1860
those selling false gods turned away
while cats who beg are welcomed
4. The Downstairs Bathroom: The Importance of
Washing
A long room exactly matching its sister bathroom
now re-arranged upstairs
a green medicine cabinet matched a green door
the shower, new in the 1980’s, used only to
water houseplants – the iron tub the favorite child
the space capsule shower might launch the bather
if you fell in the tub you knew where you were
a mysterious back door leads to nowhere now
you could air off from the shower
startling the neighbors
where once the door led to the oldest part
eaten up by heavy machinery
to appease insurance coverage
5. The Dining Room: Under-Developed
Southern yellow pine covers the floor
Where underneath teapot wallpaper
runes of earlier dwellers are hidden now
under Benjamin Moore’s lemon ice
a New Jersey grandmother’s buffets face off
near the mantle bereft of its chimney, now gone
four doorways with two doors encircle a room
used infrequently now
the kitchen table a better altar for communing
with family, friends, each other
6. The Living Room: Elemental Light
Two bay windows are now one
The non-historical wide-screen window frames
the Head of the Bay blue with four daily tides
my mother-in-law counted as her last days dwindled down
and she left, one last kiss from her seven-decades-spouse
then carried out the two front doors by Burpee’s men
leaving by front doors - the final exit in New England
this room transformed from vinyl and
miniature golf green to sea glass colors
the same room where dozing in
the sun and heat your parents dozed
we now fall asleep in winter’s solar embrace
7.
The Circular
Stairwell: Step By Step Processing
A two-story-three-door hallway embraces the light of
lemon walls
curved to meet the railing of steam-bent walnut
the shipyard craft of bending, pinning wood to shapes
a ghost of an older newel post traces the floor to
the fourteen stair assent to our bedroom
where your parents conceived the seven children
of your generation now moving toward an antique stage
8. The Front Bedroom: Heat and Light
Two “eyes” overlook The Bay in another room of light
where you write and we love
you more than we when young and more agile
more books now layer each side of the bed
yours full of history, poems – yours and friends
my side art, biography, photography
outside the white door on the landing
a tiny door under attic stairs leads nowhere
a hidden space for children to hide
9. The Buddha Room: Single Toning
A spare room for infrequent single guests
once your sister’s room in girlhood’s joy
now holds my lost brother’s ashes waiting
ten years now for a time when I can give him
up to the sea’s final rest
meanwhile this Asian room meditates
with Buddha’s blessings
and Asian silks
10. The So-Called Study: Emergency Enlargement
This room – a walk-through – to avoid the memory
the sorrow of The Halloween Boy, your brother, so young
who ended his life here so many decades ago
pain remains in the walls and in our hearts
11. A Makeshift Bathroom: Variable Contrast
Two rooms into two different spaces with
three doors and a half-wall dividing one
room for collages, assemblages, watercolors
endless collections for my retirement into art
the other half the upstairs bathroom
not a traditional up-grade, a makeshift room
with old twin sinks, the porcelain claw foot tub
and the Boston
toilet hiding
behind Toile de Jouy
screens
a room where the carpenter discovered
the live wire in one wall – a triumph of containment
12. The Back Bedroom: Focus the Image
The largest bedroom formalized for us, en suite
given over to guests not familiar with the front
bedroom’s
light and life overlooking water, tides, beaches and
birds
this was the room where I cried all night when my mother
died before we married – the room where you came to
me in the dark – how could your parents not hear you
creeping along noisy floorboards or in the old bed
with collapsed springs making our cocoon?
eager young love risking every protocol
13. The Attic: Temperature’s Powerful Effect
Narrow stairs both front and back lead to the top
of the house with high views over the harbor
the place your father sanded, smoothed, re-painted 40
doors
high rooflines hold his neatly placed battens to keep out
cold
the four-storied-re-built-twice-chimney soars beyond
reach
stored and scattered belongings of generations fill the
space
some objects too sacred to abandon
others too heavy, left for the next dweller
a place for a sad child to hide or
a dreamer to watch gulls fly by so near or
crows in spruce only an arm’s length away
the moon moves across the sky – almost full in admiration
sea smoke danced on winter water a day or two ago
anticipating praise of your day arriving with Arctic’s
breath
another winter adds to your decades before we gathered
together
we have added fifty more to focus the image
now in some anxiety
we wonder how long we can manage this big house we love
how long will we live? who will be the first to see the
other die?
let us avoid that moment for as long as we can and
honor this house and our ancestors and
write your poems for all who love you
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