Dirigo: A Love Letter to Maine
I was born here in 1952,
a pastor’s child cradled between salt tide and spruce,
where mornings smell of woodsmoke and sermons,
and the sun lifts itself slow but certain
over a people who learned long ago
that endurance is its own kind of prayer.
Before my first cry,
Maine was writing its long, rough, shining story
a compass pointing ever north,
ever forward.
In 1642, Georgeana (York)
became the first American city to lift its name
to the wind off the Atlantic.
By 1677, Massachusetts bought this wild, stubborn land
for $6,000, a bargain no ledger could ever justify,
for how do you price a coastline
stitched from granite and longing?
In Wiscasset, in 1805,
forty-five women gathered in Mrs. Silas Lee’s parlor
hands calloused, hope unbroken
and formed a society to lift one another
before anyone else thought to do it.
Quiet revolutions, Maine-style.
Our history is a quilt of odd wonders:
the Portland Rum Riot thundering over cobblestones;
Thomaston’s donut cutter turning hunger into comfort;
Chester Greenwood’s earmuffs,
born of cold ears and Yankee ingenuity.
We gave the nation Margaret Chase Smith,
who stood before the world and said,
Yes, a woman can lead.
We gave the Church James A. Healy,
a Black bishop consecrated on Maine soil
where winter tries every soul
and still cannot freeze the spirit.
We watched young Samantha Smith fly to the USSR
a child carrying peace the way others carry backpacks
because Maine children learn early
that courage fits even the smallest shoulders.
We celebrated love in 2012
when our people said yes
to same-sex marriage,
the tide of equality rolling in
as steady as a harbor tide.
And then
October 25, 2023.
Lewiston.
A night when our hearts shattered
like ice breaking under sudden weight.
Eighteen gone,
the air thick with sirens and disbelief.
Maine, brought to its knees
but never to its end.
Because here, grief does not hollow us.
It binds us.
Like snowpack knitting the forest floor
so spring can break through.
We held one another.
Lit candles.
Named our dead like blessings.
Stood in grocery store lines
and hugged strangers with the gentleness
of people who understand mountains
and the storms that roam them.
This is Maine.
The coast that claws at the Atlantic
yet still offers beaches soft enough
for children’s feet.
The lakes that mirror heaven
on July afternoons.
The deep woods where the silence
is not empty,
but holy.
The mountains that rise like elders
ancient, patient
teaching us to stand back up.
We are a people carved by weather
and steadied by one another.
We carry our history like a lantern
we refuse to let go dim.
And so we say it still:
DIRIGO : I lead.
We lead not with noise
but with endurance.
Not with force
but with compassion.
Not with perfection
but with the fierce, stubborn hope
that even in darkness,
even in loss,
even in the longest winter,
Maine will find its way toward dawn.
And we will walk there together.
