Scraped Bald, Cadillac Mountain

“Scraped Bald” was painted after my first winter in Maine, after a chilly spring trek to the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, which overlooks Bar Harbor and the Porcupine Islands of Frenchman Bay. I had taken a geology course that winter. The experience inspired the following poem.

***** Another Painting, by Joan Vienot
It hardly seems fair, the privilege of living for the better part of seven decades
A full life, fully living, in places where others slave and save just to visit.
Counting forty-two years on a beach in Florida, white sands, tropical colors,
And now, today, stepping lightly to leave no trace on this Maine mountaintop,
Stepping so carefully on hard-as-steel rock-hard rock.
Taller than her brothers, the mountain requires respect.
I see the ages from this top-down pink Cadillac, a strong wind stinging my cheeks,
Freezing fingers holding my coat closed.
My windy watering eyes might have seen a blurry family of porcupines
Waddling across a puddle below.
The corner turns for another vast view, more pink granite with gray weathering,
The fading echo of volcanic rock scraped bald by glacial ice through the eons,
And now krummholz whistling over bluets and blooming blueberries,
Serviceberry, rhodora, lime-green replacing grayed sienna.
And then descending, traveling through a photo calendar,
Forty-two becomes four hundred twenty, four hundred twenty million years
To realize the dream of an ideal life,
This life, another life for me, this another place, this another time, another painting.