Damn Desert - Oct. 19, 2026

Freeport, Maine 

summer1959 

perhaps my parents

wanted to build character

by making their two boys

walk the Desert of Maine

a twenty-acre attraction

of preserved sand dunes

that we trudged up and over

and struggled to finish

even at seventy degrees

we were dragging feet

in the heat, dying for water,

complaining all the way

sixty-five years later

I’ve chosen to live

in miles of sand and cactus

under a mostly burning sun

and though I love it

there are still times

when it bubbles up;

that old familiar whine