Gloucester Poet Charles Olson

Maximus to the Max

By: Charles Giuliano - May 27, 2016

Gloucester Poet Charles Olson

That other guy
Also Charles
Glomming onto
Glostah
My birthright too
His Maximus Poems
Thicker than
New York's
Phone book
Sucking oxygen
Out of salt air
Every which way
Upside and down
In and out
From Colonial times
First fisheries
To when he croaked
An era ended
Trying to get through
Dense tome
A few a day
All winter
Till my eye got busted
Laid up
No looking
Listened to Keith
Books on tape
Got me through it
Came back with
My own stuff
The grim W's
Then a capper
Lazarus
Risen from the grave
Where Olson rests
Not messing with me
This week in
Gloucester
Visiting familiar
Sights and sounds
Where I grew up
Exploring our turf
Feeling footsteps
Behind me
Every move shadowed
That huge dude
Such a presence
Making the rounds
My own life
Where Celtic
Ancestors roamed
Leaving tracks in
Dogtown
Like dinosaurs
Once vibrant
Brawny Nugents
Strapping lads
Eight of them
Working the land
Beaver Dam Farm
Encountering
Olson's guys
In the archives
Know all about you
Read this and that
Cape Ann
So rich in history
Nugents part of it
You neglected them
Little romance
Evoked by farmers
Compared to tales
Of blustering Atlantic
Storms that took men
Down in the deep
Rotting flesh
Festering fish
Ancient Gloucester
Now violated by
Windmills
Turbines they call them
Killing gulls
Ruined views
Condos cramming
What's left of
Wild fields
Blueberry patches
Now shopping malls
Come summer
Twenty five bucks
To park at beach
My family owned
Screw one percenters
We need Olson now
To kick them in the ass
With alligator breath
Epic chronicles
Truth serum of
Time and tide