A Face For Each Feature

Milford is a farmer who busies himself with the demon-beauty that is cornucopia.
Amherst is a lunch pail of egg and toast—the general of the highway army.
Derry is a stand of leaning pine holding council with fox and skunk.
Further south, Lowell is a bowler; sliding along warped wood.
Dracut is a shameful boy; fidgeting next to his mother.
Waltham is a spindly stretch of mortar, with a franchise of cheap eats.
Lawrence is the friend that smokes too much and mooches.
Concord wears a tri-cornered hat and takes too long to load.
Boston is the grand inquisitor who bends to no one.
She is a rank amateur when it comes to the color of humanism.
The Cape shows its bicep to the ocean.
Quabbin fills up and spills and is a watershed.
Berkshire is the noble timeshare of the Downy Woodpecker.
Williamstown makes pottery meant to break.
Groton is at once nocturnal, and then it becomes as saymite.
Dunstable is a lost vagabond, with overstuffed suitcases and apple orchards for arms.
Franconia has at its heart, the downward necklace of water.
We come to the face, and grow like the Bohdi Tree.
Keene has the stability of a garden row,
planted close to the tender caregiver of the country.
Hampton and Salisbury are cousins once removed;
implacable beauty in the inlet of salt.
The Grand Banks, the mother of us all,
shelter bullets of scrod and tarpon.
And then there’s the signature of Nashua;
the floral script of an antiquated hand,
writing her story across a hilly page.