Where the Highway Ends
By
May 6, 2021
If you take Route 128 North all the way to the end,
and drive over one of three bridges
and above the Annisquam river,
you’ll find it.
A small town of seven thousand year-round residents.
We call it The Island.
Despite the bridges connecting us to the rest of Cape Ann and the world beyond,
our winding river seems bigger
than the brackish water, filled with boats and kayaks that skate along her surface in the summer.
We are encircled, surrounded on all sides by the Annisquam, and her comrade,
The Atlantic.
Swirling and churning.
On any given July day, you’ll find our bridges jammed
with people eager for a red lobster, a toe dipped in our ocean,
or a picture of that Red Shack, by the name of Motif #1.
In homegrown New England,
days that grow longer, spent on Old Garden Beach, Good Harbor, Long.
Illegal beach fires at a place you’ll never find.
When I am old, and the unborn are young,
I hope they get to keep the piece of emerald sea glass,
found tucked beneath seven thousand grains of sand,
that finds a home in their denim pocket.
Until the days grow long again.
In these first days of spring, I am 250 miles away.
Wondering if those hungry tourists will still visit,
year after year
if there may come a time when the shore lines are ripped to pieces, our marshes
destroyed.
They can only see the beauty of the present
while we see the intensifying storms, milder winters,
red tides.
I’ve grown and been reshaped by the shores, their lines and I different every year.
My parents are planning to sell our house
in a few years when the tides rise
to sign the deed
to our home.
We live too close to the ocean.
The visitors say “you’re lucky.”
And I say,
“Yes I am.”
But luck is running out.
The tide may be turning on us, for what we’ve done to her.
It used to be the main attraction,
now it's our fatal flaw.
"I wrote this poem about my hometown, Rockport, Massachusetts. I wanted to exemplify how this area of the Northeast is vulnerable to sea-level rise and how that has the potential to seriously harm our ecosystems, economy, and livelihoods. I also wanted to talk about how Rockport is a tourist town. People come from all over the country to visit, but I worry that there isn’t enough awareness about what the future may hold in a world affected by climate change. I wrote in the poem that my parents are planning to sell our house within the next 10 years, which is true. They believe that the housing market will suffer once sea-level rise becomes detrimental to our town’s infrastructure. Once my sister and I are finished with college, they will move inland or north. I can’t say I blame them, and we are fortunate to not have all of our family living here in Rockport, but my sister and I will have to say goodbye to the place where we grew up. I worry about the generations of people who live here, mostly surviving off the fishing industry. I wonder how they will fare in the coming decades, since the industry is already suffering from overfishing. Regulations, too, are severely hurting smaller operations. I wanted to invoke a feeling of desperation in this poem that is especially connected to how Rockport and similar towns largely depend on tourism. The way we market this place is through idyllic beauty, beauty which continues to be threatened by climate change
