I think this is a repeat posting of this poem however I am feeling more than usual homesick today and that alone validates a repeat. Six days after writing this poem, which describes the view from my living space of the cove across the road, I slipped into the Beastie II and headed for Pennsylvania and inland routes south. There were winter storm warnings for the east coast and I needed to get to Interstate Highway 81 to avoid the bad road conditions. The weather was snotty but not icy most of the way. Once I got to Cherry Point, NC. I was happy.
Now it’s been nearly three and a half months and I have a month to go before I will slip into a different car and return to Maine. (This new car I have dubbed Rocinante.) I look forward to the end of May. It’s not written in stone that I will leave then. When the end of May arrives I will need to make a decision whether or not to return.
This the photo of what I was looking at when I wrote this poem.
TO BE EXPECTED
Pushing and shoving,
The one boisterous the other determined,
What began as an encounter has grown
Into a violent contest.
The ocean has decided to leave,
The wind objects and takes offense,
The one determined to go home,
The other howls and turns disruptive.
Look at the trees trying to
Not notice,
The ledges remain quiet but
Unwittingly contribute.
Help is not on the way,
We all are just witnessing
Bad behavior,
Bullied into silence.
What looks like a concession,
The ocean offers up the tops of wavelets
But slides beneath to flow steadily
Toward another continent.
Rumpled and disheveled
The ocean pushes past,
The wind struggles but
can’t forestall the exit.
The wind cannot prevent its
competition from leaving and
The trees fret and the ledges defer,
Both know the outcome.
It’s happened before,
It’s happening now,
It will happen over
And over and over.
G. M. Goodwin
20 January 2016
Playing Fair and Being Kind 
Funny how water affects us, how writing by water is different from writing anywhere else. I’ll be back in NM Wednesday or Thursday, and then back in AZ for three days the following week. Life is looking the be knotted with travel for a month of so and then should settle out to a predictable pattern. Summer and Fall on the coast of Maine sounds beautiful and serene to me.
Good to hear from you, brother. I miss my house and the big chair by the window from which I simultaneously absorb and radiate. I want to see Rocinante in the driveway. I want to walk across the grass and climb into the old pickup and start the engine. I want to remove the snow plow and carry things to the dump for recycling. I want to drive to the Red Cup and hug familiar people. Now I am weeping for fucks sake.