Poem: For the Class of 1960

Kendall Merriam: The Auditorium

Mon, 07/13/2020 - 2:30pm

    Do you know who Boris Johnson is?

    thought by many an ill-spoken boor

    but he realized the value  and need

    for the arts in England

    and as Prime Minister

    put 2 Billion of Great Britain’s budget

    behind creative minds

    of that small country

    Rockland’s small-minded City Council

    over the years has tried

    to squeeze as much money as it can

    out of the old High School

    discouraging those who want to

    fix the roof,

    Kendall Merriam was born and raised in Rockland. He has a history degree from Gordon College and pursued graduate studies in military and maritime history at the University of Maine at Orono and Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn. He received grants to study historical research at Colonial Williamsburg and the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

    Merriam has been widely published, including in Katyn W Literaturze (Katyn in Literature), a Polish anthology of literary works about the WWII Katyn Forest Massacre by 120 international authors, including Czeslaw Milosz. Most of Merriam’s work has a definite muse – family, friends, and strangers – with life’s larger themes of work, love, loss and death.

    put in an elevator,

    replace the chipped old seats

    destroying the memories of the beauty

    of Corinne Simmons and Linda Mountfort

    in the senior class play

    and Wayne Johnson’s political career

    think what could be done

    if the town did not tax

    the yellow brick building

    but instead threw money

    behind a reasonable renovation

    for a new beauty of the auditorium

    matching that of new generations

    of lobster queens

    driven by young mechanics

    taught the graces by teachers

    in our auditorium

     

    Kendall Merriam, Home, 7/10/2020 8:58 AM

    Listening to Public Radio News.

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